Strong Families Strong Forces: Supporting Active Duty Families With Very Young Children

Boston University

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Deployment

Treatments: Behavioral: Strong Families Strong Forces; Behavioral: Strong Parents

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT03045159

W81XWH-14-2-0123

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of this research is to evaluate the efficacy of the Strong Families Strong Forces Parenting Program compared to a parental self-care (Strong Parents) condition in a sample of 150 Active Duty Families with children ages birth to 5 years.

Full description

The overall aim of this research is to adapt and evaluate the efficacy of a parenting program compared to a parental self-care program for Active Duty families. A sample of 150 Active Duty families with young children who have a parent scheduled to deploy in the next six months will be recruited to participate. Families will be assigned either to receive the Strong Families Strong Forces Parenting Program, designed to reduce the impact of deployment separation on parenting stress and co-parenting, or to the Strong Parents Self-Care program, designed to support parents to focus on the importance of self-care throughout the deployment cycle. Investigators will compare the two groups on parenting stress, quality of parent-child relationships, parenting/co-parenting, and family and child well-being.

Enrollment: 300 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Cohabitating couple with at least one child age birth to 5 years old in which one parent is active duty and is scheduled to deploy within the next 6 months
• Anticipated deployment time must be at least six months and excludes separations due to the Service Member attending a school
• Anticipate that non-deploying parent will remain in the area during the deployment
• Both parents are willing to consent to study participation
• DEERS -eligible
• 18 years or older
• English-speaking
• The parent remaining at home to care for the children anticipates remaining within 30 miles of Fort Hood to be seen in home, otherwise will need to be seen in office
• Anticipate that both parents will remain in the area for at least three months after redeployment to complete intervention and follow-up assessment

Exclusion criteria

• Any family member with a significant medical or psychiatric condition requiring a higher level of care than can be provided by the study/comparison protocols
• Active psychosis or mania

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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300 participants in 2 patient groups

Strong Families

Experimental group

Description:

parenting program

Treatment:

Behavioral: Strong Families Strong Forces

Strong Parents

Active Comparator group

Description:

self-care program

Treatment:

Behavioral: Strong Parents