Is the Incredible Years programme effective for children with neuro-developmental disorders and for families with Social Services involvement in the “real world” of community CAMHS?

Abstract

Over the past few years parenting has become the focus for political attention in an attempt to tackle high levels of disruptive and anti-social behaviour. The Incredible Years (IY) programme (Webster-Stratton, 1999) is one of the parenting training packages that has been identified as a treatment of choice. There are, however, few studies available to demonstrate the clinical relevance in real world Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) and even less knowledge about how children affected by a neuro-developmental disorder and families involved with Social Services can benefit. The BASIC IY videotape parent training programme was used for consecutive groups of parents across two neighbouring CAMH services (n = 128). Data were collected before and after intervention using the Eyberg Behaviour Checklist (Eyberg & Ross, 1978) and a number of Visual Analogue Scales. The effectiveness of the group was compared to that of other studies and the outcomes for two sub-groups--children with a neuro-developmental disorder and families with Social Services involvement--were evaluated. Statistically significantly post-intervention scores were found for all groups showing moderate to large effect sizes. The results are comparable to other effectiveness studies (e.g., Gardner, Barton, & Klimes, 2006; Scott, 2005). They also show that the IY is equally effective for children diagnosed with a neuro-developmental disorder and for families with multiple and complex needs.