TY - JOUR
T1 - Randomized control trial report on the effectiveness of Group Attachment-Based Intervention (GABI©)
T2 - Improvements in the parent-child relationship not seen in the control group
AU - Steele, Howard
AU - Murphy, Anne
AU - Bonuck, Karen
AU - Meissner, Paul
AU - Steele, Miriam
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Cambridge University Press 2019.
PY - 2019/1/1
Y1 - 2019/1/1
N2 - This paper reports on a randomized control trial involving children less than 3 years old and their mothers who were regarded at risk of maltreating their children by referral agencies. Mothers' risk status derived from a heavy trauma burden (average exposure over the first 18 years of their lives to 10 possible adverse childhood experiences [ACEs] was >5), mental health challenges (15%-28% had experienced a prior psychiatric hospitalization), and prior removal of a child to foster care (20%). Mothers were randomly assigned to either a widely used parenting class known as Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) or the Group Attachment-Based Intervention (GABI), a multifamily 26-week treatment. The resulting mother-child pairs available for consideration in this baseline versus end-of-treatment report were 35 families in the STEP arm and 43 families in the GABI arm. The focus of this paper is the outcome measure of observed parent-child relationship assessed with the Coding of Interactive Behavior (Feldman, 1998) collected at baseline and end of treatment. In comparison to STEP, results indicated that GABI was linked to significant improvements in maternal supportive presence and dyadic reciprocity, and significant declines in maternal hostility and dyadic constriction (proxies for risk of child maltreatment). These medium-to large-sized effects remained significant even after controlling for mothers' prior ACEs in analysis of covariance procedures. In addition, two small interaction effects of ACEs by treatment type were found, underlining the need for, and value of, treatments that are sensitive to parents' traumatic histories.
AB - This paper reports on a randomized control trial involving children less than 3 years old and their mothers who were regarded at risk of maltreating their children by referral agencies. Mothers' risk status derived from a heavy trauma burden (average exposure over the first 18 years of their lives to 10 possible adverse childhood experiences [ACEs] was >5), mental health challenges (15%-28% had experienced a prior psychiatric hospitalization), and prior removal of a child to foster care (20%). Mothers were randomly assigned to either a widely used parenting class known as Systematic Training for Effective Parenting (STEP) or the Group Attachment-Based Intervention (GABI), a multifamily 26-week treatment. The resulting mother-child pairs available for consideration in this baseline versus end-of-treatment report were 35 families in the STEP arm and 43 families in the GABI arm. The focus of this paper is the outcome measure of observed parent-child relationship assessed with the Coding of Interactive Behavior (Feldman, 1998) collected at baseline and end of treatment. In comparison to STEP, results indicated that GABI was linked to significant improvements in maternal supportive presence and dyadic reciprocity, and significant declines in maternal hostility and dyadic constriction (proxies for risk of child maltreatment). These medium-to large-sized effects remained significant even after controlling for mothers' prior ACEs in analysis of covariance procedures. In addition, two small interaction effects of ACEs by treatment type were found, underlining the need for, and value of, treatments that are sensitive to parents' traumatic histories.
KW - Coding Interactive Behavior
KW - Group Attachment-Based Intervention (GABI)
KW - Steps Toward Effective Parenting (STEP)
KW - adverse childhood experiences
KW - child maltreatment
KW - randomized control trial
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U2 - 10.1017/S0954579418001621
DO - 10.1017/S0954579418001621
M3 - Article
C2 - 30757992
AN - SCOPUS:85061493132
SN - 0954-5794
SP - 203
EP - 217
JO - Development and Psychopathology
JF - Development and Psychopathology
ER -