Caregivers’ Participation in Trauma-Informed Parenting Programs and Its Influence on the Growth Trajectories of Children’s Socio-Emotional Well-Being

Background & Purpose: Research suggests that traumatic events that lead to out-of-home placement or the removal of children from the birth parents often hinder children’s development into healthy, caring, and productive adults and keep them from reaching their full potential. The critical question is: how would the well-being of children change if caregivers of children exposed to adverse childhood events were equipped with knowledge and strategies to manage traumatic reactions? This study draws on emerging insights from a child welfare research demonstration in Illinois’ Cook County to shed light on the early offering of interventions that support therapeutic relationships between caregivers and children in their care.

Methods: Data for the study come from the “Illinois Birth through Three” (IB3) waiver demonstration project, which focused on whether trauma-informed parenting programs reduce trauma symptoms, increase permanency, reduce re-entry, and improve the well-being of children up to three years old who are placed in foster care. We used Latent growth curve modeling techniques to examine the growth trajectories of three well-being outcomes—attachment, self-regulation, initiative—over time. The sample size gradually dropped from 1,702 at the 1^st screening to 148 by the 4^th screening, due to children exiting care.

Results: Overall, both intervention and comparison caregivers reported improvements in children’s social and emotional functioning (i.e., attachment, self-regulation, initiative) over time in foster care. While the comparison group at earlier screenings reported greater improvements than the intervention group, over time, children in the comparison group had lower reported socio-emotional functioning than children in the intervention group. In other words, children in the comparison group start at an advantage, but by the fourth assessment, children in the intervention group outperform children in the comparison group on all three indicators.

Conclusions & Implications: Our findings draw attention to the need for long-term tracking of intervention effects on well-being outcomes. Of particular focus is the emerging evidence that trauma-informed parenting programs may hold promise for improving children’s social and emotional functioning over time compared to offering typical family services.