Abstract
BackgroundParenting programs have been highlighted as a way of supporting and empowering parents. As programs designed to promote children’s health and well-being are scarce, a new health-promotion program, All Children in Focus, has been developed. The purpose of this trial was to evaluate the potential effectiveness of the program in promoting parental self-efficacy and child health and development, as well as to investigate possible moderators of these outcomes.MethodsA multicenter randomized waitlist-controlled trial was conducted. The trial included 621 parents with children aged 3–12 years. Parents were randomized to receive the intervention directly or to join a waitlist control group. Parents completed questionnaires at baseline, 2 weeks after the intervention, and 6 months post-baseline. To evaluate potential effects of the program, as well as any moderating variables, multilevel modeling with a repeated-measures design was applied.ResultsParents in the intervention group reported that their self-efficacy (p < .001), as well as their perceptions of children’s health and development (p < .05), increased 6 months post-baseline when compared with parents in the control group. One variable was found to moderate both outcomes: parents’ positive mental health. Furthermore, parents’ educational level and number of children moderated parental self-efficacy, while the children’s age moderated child health and development. Having a poor positive mental health, a university-level education, more than one child in the family, and older children, made the families benefit more.ConclusionsIn the first randomized controlled trial of All Children in Focus, we found that the program appears to promote both parental self-efficacy and children’s health and development in a general population. Additionally, we found that families may benefit differently depending on their baseline characteristics. This contributes to an existing understanding of the advantages of offering universal parenting programs as a public health approach to strengthening families. However, further research is needed to investigate long-term effects and mediating variables, as well as the potential cost-effectiveness of the program.Trial registrationCurrent Controlled Trials: ISRCTN70202532. November 7th 2012.
Highlights
Parenting programs have been highlighted as a way of supporting and empowering parents
Regarding other baseline characteristics and outcome measures, there were no differences between parents who failed to complete the measurements and parents who completed the measurements
We found that the ABC program appears to promote parent-rated self-efficacy, as well as parents’ perceptions of child health and development, which indicates that families benefit from parental participation in the ABC program
Summary
Parenting programs have been highlighted as a way of supporting and empowering parents. As programs designed to promote children’s health and well-being are scarce, a new health-promotion program, All Children in Focus, has been developed. The purpose of this trial was to evaluate the potential effectiveness of the program in promoting parental self-efficacy and child health and development, as well as to investigate possible moderators of these outcomes. Parenting programs generally aim to establish desirable change in parental behavior and thereby reduce problematic child behavior [3]. These programs are usually, according to the classification of prevention, divided into universal, selective, and indicated levels [4]. Reviews have shown that these programs have the potential to improve parenting skills and decrease behavioral problems in children [5,6,7,8,9]
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