The Role of Father Involvement in Moderating the Impact of Paraprofessional Home-Based Services to Prevent Physical Child Abuse and Neglect

Background and Purpose: Recent meta-analyses of outcome studies have indicated that home visitation services can prevent significant numbers of children from experiencing physical child abuse and neglect. However, little evidence is available shedding light on the role of fathers in shaping the impact of these services, or how such services may shape fathers' roles with their young children. Further, no evidence is yet available from randomized trials on the effectiveness of an older established “cousin” prevention strategy, parent aide services, which deploys trained paraprofessionals in the homes of families already identified as facing high risk of child abuse or neglect. Given that such home visiting prevention programs operate in over 600 communities throughout the U. S., this first-ever randomized trial of parent aide services seeks to address the following questions: 1) Do parent aide service programs predict greater positive father involvement with children? 2) Does positive father involvement with children moderate the impact of parent aide services on physical child maltreatment risk?; and 3) Does positive father engagement with parent aide services moderate the impact of parent aide services on physical child maltreatment risk?

Methods: A diverse sample of 138 families were randomly assigned across six parent aide program sites serving families in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina to receive either parent aide services plus case management services or case management services only. Data were collected using computer assisted self-interviewing technology (audio-CASI) on physical child abuse and neglect risk, associated risk and protective factors, father involvement with the child, and engagement with services at baseline and at 6 months after service initiation, with an additional follow-up of 1 year after service initiation, after families in the control group were switched into the intervention condition (cross-over wait list control design). With the small study sample size, Cohen's d difference scores were calculated on outcomes in addition to OLS regression analyses with study condition, background control variables and interaction terms entered as predictors.

Results: From pretest to posttest, parent aide services were linked with a mild increase in positive father involvement with the child (Cohen D-difference = .266, ns), and even smaller improvements in child maltreatment risk (ns). In regression analyses, fathers' positive involvement with their children (â = .35, df = 73, p < .02), and their positive engagement in parent aide services (â = .26, df = 73, p < .05) moderated the impact of these services, such that services were more noticeably linked with lower maternal psychological aggression in families with more involved and service engaged fathers, with a similar but non-significant trend for maternal physical aggression. These findings were not present with physical neglect proxies.

Conclusions and Implications: These preliminary findings point to an important role that fathers play in shaping the observable impact of home-based prevention services targeting physical child abuse (but not neglect) risk, both in terms of their involvement with their children and their engagement in services. Such findings suggest the possibility that prevention programs may provide more discernable benefit with greater inclusion of fathers in services.