Engaging Male Caregivers in Effective Prevention Programming to Reduce Risk of Violence and Violence-Related Injury

NCT ID: NCT05285267

Last Updated: 2024-09-05

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 139 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2022-03-01
• Study Completion Date: 2024-07-31

Brief Summary

Fathers are disproportionately involved in and responsible for family violence. Forty percent of maltreatment cases include the child's father, which is quite considerable when one considers mothers spend more time with the child during the day and engage in a greater variety of activities, relative to fathers. Importantly, the majority of child victims were those five and younger.

Contrary to these potential negative impacts, fathers contribute positively to many aspects of child development and overall family functioning, making unique contributions to child peer relationships, language development, academic skills, and the proficiency of the other parent in parenting tasks. Thus, efforts to emphasize the father's role in the child's life, and attenuate any potential risks due to child or family directed violence, represent key public health initiatives within prevention efforts.

There are many potential prevention programs that have been developed to support male caregivers. The Nurturing Fathers program and the Coaching Our Children: Heightening Essential Skills program are two examples of father-focused preventive intervention efforts. However, these approaches have not typically been evaluated as preventive interventions in community-based samples using scientifically rigorous methods. Thus, the present study aims to evaluate the effectiveness of these approaches in reducing family violence and improving male caregiver competencies in a randomized, controlled trial. Specifically, Nurturing Fathers Alone and Nurturing Fathers + COACHES will be compared to an attention control, and male caregivers and their children will be randomly assigned to one of the three groups.

Conditions

Child Maltreatment; Parenting

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: PREVENTION
• Blinding Strategy: SINGLE

Study Groups

Parent-Child Activities

Families assigned to the active control group will participate in weekly "parent-child open house" where the parents will be permitted to meet with other parents in the meeting room and the children will be invited to attend an open gym. There will be no formal curriculum for the parent meetings, but the facilitator will be available to inform the parents of community resources (e.g., mentorship programs) and a resources table will be made available of community activities and referrals in the same manner as the other two groups.

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Shared Parent-Child Activities

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Structured parent-child activities

Nurturing Fathers

The Nurturing Fathers program (Perlman, 2021) is an adaptation of the Nurturing Parent program. It is a 13-week program that covers the role of fathers, the importance of nurturance rather than fear in fathering, how to effectively play and discipline a child, how to build relationships with the child and co-parent, and it ends with a graduate ceremony. For the present study, consistent with a prevention approach, the investigators will modify the Nurturing Fathers program to focus on the content directly related to parenting skills. The investigators will implement an eight-week program, which is consistent with the duration of prior, successfully attended father-focused interventions (e.g., Fabiano et al., 2009).

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Behavioral Parent Support

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Parent training on effective child management strategies

Nurturing Fathers + COACHES

The Nurturing Fathers program described above will be implemented as described. For the last 45 minutes of the sessions, fathers will join the child activity group and participate in shared parent-child activities consistent with the COACHES model. For the present study, several adaptations to the clinic-based COACHES program will be made, similar to those successfully deployed in our preliminary study in Head Start preschool settings (Caserta, Fabiano, et al., 2018). The investigators will use the Nurturing Fathers curriculum as the substantive content for each meeting, and then use the parent-child interactions within recreational sports as the forum for practicing skills.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Behavioral Parent Support

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Parent training on effective child management strategies

COACHES

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

This intervention involves practice of parenting strategies with facilitator monitoring and support.

Interventions

Behavioral Parent Support

Parent training on effective child management strategies

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Shared Parent-Child Activities

Structured parent-child activities

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

COACHES

This intervention involves practice of parenting strategies with facilitator monitoring and support.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Resident of Western New York
• Have a target child three to six years of age
• Have a male caregiver who consents to participate in the study
• Caregiver and child can speak and understand English.

Exclusion Criteria

• A child with an estimated IQ less than 70
• Any child who is presenting with severe developmental delays (e.g., autism level 2 or 3)
• A child or caregiver who previously participated in the study
• Any target child who has a male or female caregiver who has had a previous, founded, child protection complaint (will be excluded from the study and referred to alternative programming)

• Minimum Eligible Age: 3 Years
• Maximum Eligible Age: 6 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Buffalo Prenatal Perinatal Network

UNKNOWN

Sponsor Role: collaborator

Florida International University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Responsibility Role: SPONSOR

Locations

Center for Children and Families

Amherst, New York, United States

Countries

United States

Provided Documents

Document Type: Informed Consent Form

View Document

Other Identifiers

IRB-21-0474

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id