Evaluation of a Family Strengthening Program Evaluation in Sierra Leone to Prevent Family Separation

Boston College

Status: Completed

Conditions: Parenting; Parent-Child Relations; Emotion Regulation; Economic Problems

Treatments: Behavioral: Family strengthening program

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT05632237

cafo

Details and patient eligibility

About

In Sierra Leone, poverty and challenges with family functioning can lead to family separation, and children may go to live on the street or enter residential care institutions/orphanages. Helping Children Worldwide (HCW), a non-profit organization with over 20 years of experience in Sierra Leone, has developed a two-part Family Strengthening Program delivered by their program partners in Sierra Leone, the Child Reintegration Centre, to improve families financial literacy and attachment between caregivers and children, with the ultimate goal of preventing family separation. The hypothesis of this study is that the Family Strengthening Program program is effective at (1) changing parenting behaviors, (2) improving emotional regulation, (3) improving caregiver-child attachment, and (4) improving financial literacy in dyads consisting of children ages 9-13 and their caregivers.

Enrollment: 226 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 9+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria:

1. Dyads must consist of a principal child (the one whose situation initiated their involvement with the Child Reintegration Centre) and their primary caregiver (as defined by the Child Reintegration Centre as the person in the family primarily responsible for the health and wellbeing of the principal child and is noted as such in their case file)
2. Primary child is ages 9-13
3. Dyad is actively participating in Child Reintegration Centre services (i.e., child must have been seen by the case manager in the last month)
4. Dyad lives in the Bo area.

Exclusion criterion:

(1) Family has been assessed by the Child Reintegration Centre to be in active crisis, i.e., specific concerns about the child being at-risk or unsafe (suspicions of abuse or neglect).

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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226 participants in 2 patient groups

Family strengthening program

Experimental group

Treatment:

Behavioral: Family strengthening program

Care as usual

No Intervention group

Description:

These participants have already been receiving case management from the Child Reintegration Centre prior to the study, and they will continue to receive care as usual, which is to receive normal case management visits without this added Family Strengthening Program component. Case management consists of a social work staff alternating between visiting children at home or at school each month to provide supervision, coaching, counseling, assessments, and identification of additional support needs.