Parent Program to Improve Child Behavior Problems

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP)

Status: Completed

Conditions: Child Behavior Problems

Treatments: Behavioral: Immediate CARE

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02049749

13-010728

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this research study is to learn whether or not a brief parenting program called Child Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE) offered at a primary care office can help improve behavior problems in children who are 2-6 years old.

Full description

The study will be a randomized controlled trial (RCT) of the CARE intervention. The study will include 2-6 year old children who receive their primary care at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, South Philadelphia Primary Care clinic and whose caregiver and/or doctor has concern about a behavior problem in the child. The caregivers will also be subjects in the study.

Child-caregiver pairs who agree to be in the study will be randomly assigned to receive the CARE training immediately or in 3-4 months.

The CARE intervention will last 6 weeks and child behavior and parenting will be measured at baseline, 6-8 weeks, and 14-18 weeks. Investigators will also measure parent satisfaction with the CARE intervention.

• Child Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE) is a group parent training program.
• The goals of the program are to teach parents skills that help their children successfully reach developmental milestones while increasing positive behaviors.
• The program also was designed to help parents manage and decrease negative child behaviors.
• Each training will be led by 2 therapists and 4-10 parents will attend the CARE program together.
• Children do not attend the training but parents are encouraged to practice the skills learned at CARE between the sessions.

Enrollment: 240 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 2+ years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

1. Caregiver is 18 years or older
2. Caregiver is English speaking
3. Child is 2-6 years old
4. Caregiver reports that child has a behavior problem
5. Child attends CHOP South Philadelphia Primary Care for primary care
6. Parental/guardian permission is provided (informed consent)

Exclusion criteria

1. Child has a cognitive age less than 2 years old as determined by the referring clinician
2. Child is already receiving behavioral health therapy or medication (other than medication for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder)

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Single Group Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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240 participants in 2 patient groups

Delayed CARE

No Intervention group

Description:

40 child-caregiver pairs will be randomized to usual treatment plus delayed CARE (control). Under usual treatment, patients will be referred to a behavioral health specialist at the discretion of their pediatrician and the office social worker for additional diagnosis and treatment and/or provided with a 1-2 page informational handout on child behavior problems from the CHOP patient care manual. Following the final interview (3-4 months after enrollment for each subject) all participants randomized to the control arm (usual treatment plus delayed CARE) will receive the CARE training, if desired.

Immediate CARE

Experimental group

Description:

40 child-caregiver pairs will be randomized to usual treatment plus immediate CARE. The trainings are administered to groups of 4-10 caregivers at a time and are led by two mental health providers trained in the CARE curriculum. The children do not attend the training; however, caregivers are expected to practice the skills that they learn in CARE with their child between sessions. The curriculum involves 6 sessions over 6-8 weeks. Each session will be 1-2 hours.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Immediate CARE