Parenting InterventionCluster RCT of Embedded Parenting Intervention to Prevent Recurrence and Reduce Impairment in Young Children Exposed to Domestic Violence

The current cluster randomized trial examines the efficacy of embedding two different parenting interventions within child protection services for young children (0 to 4) who have been exposed to domestic violence and who are at moderate to high risk for recurrent experiences of maltreatment. Interventions are "embedded" in recognition of the significant role played by child protection case workers in identifying families in need of intervention, referring/engaging families in intervention, and being able to use information resulting from intervention (e.g., reports from the intervention program, observations of parenting behaviour changes made as a result of intervention) to improve decision-making in their child protection practice. Thus in this trial, ongoing child protection case workers for families are randomly assigned to receive professional development training, supervision support, and priority client access to parenting interventions in the following four conditions: a) embedded mother-child dyadic intervention (Mothers in Mind); b) embedded fathering intervention (Caring Dads); c) both mother-child dyadic and fathering intervention; d) service as usual.

Mothers in Mind (MIM) is a dyadic mother-child intervention aimed at preventing child impairment resulting from exposure to domestic violence. Intervention focuses on increasing mothers' awareness of the impact that exposure to family violence/trauma may have had on their infants and themselves as mothers, helping identify and promote positive parenting skills such as sensitivity and responsiveness to infant needs, promoting parental competence and emotional closeness and decreasing mothers' social isolation. Mothers in Mind uses an attachment and trauma-informed psycho-educational process approach in 12 weekly sessions (10 group and 2 individual).

Caring Dads (CD) aims to prevent recurrence of child exposure to domestic violence by intervening with fathers. Caring Dads includes 15 group sessions, an individual intake, and two individual sessions to set and monitor specific behaviour change goals. Major aspects of innovation in the Caring Dads program include the use of a motivational approach to engage and retain men in intervention, consistent emphasis on the need to end violence against children's mothers alongside of improving fathering; program content addressing accountability for past abuse; focus on promoting child-centered fathering over developing child management skills; and a model of collaborative practice with child protection.

Hypotheses are posed for differential outcomes among child protection workers (level of randomization) and for children who are the subject of the child protection referral (nested within workers). At the level of the individual child (primary outcome) it is hypothesized that there will be lower rates of re-referral for children of families on the caseloads of child protection workers assigned to the embedded CD, MIM and combined intervention than for those on the caseloads of workers in the service as usual condition. At the worker level (secondary outcomes), outcomes are hypothesized in two areas: 1) worker skill in conceptualizing risk and need in cases of child exposure to domestic violence and 2) increased self-efficacy for referring to and collaborating with embedded interventions. Specifically, we hypothesized that following training and at 12-month follow-up, workers in the CD/MIM intervention and combined CD and MIM condition will have greater case conceptualization skills in responding to hypothetical cases as compared to workers in the treatment as usual condition. We further hypothesize that assignment to an intervention condition will lead workers to report greater self-efficacy for collaborating with embedded parenting interventions than workers in the treatment as usual condition post-training and at 12-months follow-up.