A pilot study of school-based Filial Therapy (SBFT) with a group of Australian children attending rural primary schools: the impact on academic engagement, school attendance and behaviour

Abstract

ABSTRACT School-based Filial Therapy (SBFT), a mental health intervention for primary school children living and remote locations. The SBFT pilot was implemented in three rural primary schools in remote and regional New South Wales, Australia, using a pretest-posttest control group design to investigate the impact of 10-sessions of Filial Therapy with a paraprofessional. Target issues were frequency and severity of school behaviour incidents, attendance, academic effort and performance. Participants were 37 children in the experimental group and 22 children in a control group. An independent samples t-test was conducted with bootstrapping. Statistically significant differences were found between the experimental and control groups in the areas of executive managed behaviour (M = 3.286, SD = 3.161; t (48) = −3.5, p = .045, two-tailed, BCa 95% CI [−8.529, .642]), student attendance (M = 92.989, SD = 6.992; t (26.6) = 3, p = .006, two-tailed, BCa 95% CI [6.839, 22.702]) and academic effort and performance outcomes in science (M = 2.737, SD = .872; t (36) = −2, p = .053, two-tailed, BCa 95% CI [−1.382, .013]); (M = 2.053, SD = .780; t (37) = −2.7, p = .010, two-tailed, BCa 95% CI [-.845, .038]).