Building Healthy Parent-Child Relationships: An Examination of Parental Self-Efficacy Following Parenting Intervention Completion

Background/Purpose: Building healthy relationships to end violence has been identified as a social work grand challenge – inclusive of child maltreatment within the parent-child relationship. An essential component of child welfare (CW) services is the implementation of evidence-based (EB) parenting interventions with the intention to improve parent-child relationships, prevent continued child maltreatment, and enhance parenting practices, behaviors, and beliefs. Often, among high-risk CW-involved populations, post-intervention outcomes are reported by the clinician (i.e., observations of parent-child interactions), reliant on administrative data (i.e., maltreatment reports), or are parent-reported child measures. Though increased parenting knowledge and attitude improvements are important, parental self-efficacy (i.e., ability to incorporate and use their new knowledge) is vital to prevent repeat maltreatment especially among high-risk populations. Limited research is available on self-reported CW-involved caregiver perceptions of their personal parenting beliefs and practices post-EB intervention. This study examined changes (pre/post) in caregiver’s self-reported parenting beliefs and parental self-efficacy after participation in Regional Partnership Grant (RPG) initiative implementing a short-term EB parenting intervention: Attachment Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC).

Methods: Using a repeated measure cohort design, caregivers self-reported their beliefs about infant crying (assessed by the Infant Crying Questionnaire [ICQ]) and their sense of self-efficacy to meet their young child’s needs (assessed by the Maternal Self-Efficacy Scale [MSES]) at baseline (pre-test, n=72) and program exit (post-test, n=34). The ICQ is a 42-question survey with five-subscales (e.g., attachment; crying as communication; minimization; directive control; and spoiling) - scoring interpretation varies by subscale. The MSES is 10-item questionnaire measuring self-efficacy in specific parenting tasks (e.g., feeding; changing; soothing; bathing baby, etc.), and is scored using a summative total score (higher scores = higher parental self-efficacy). Univariate and bivariate analyses were conducted to examine pre/post-test changes.

Results: In total, 34 unique caregivers had complete data and were included in the analyses. Caregivers were primarily White (63%), non-Hispanic/Latino (93%) females (96%) with a mean age of 35 years (SD=10.7). Statistically significant improvements were found on two of the five ICQ subscales: crying as communication (t[df]= 2.6[32], p =.015) and spoiling (t[df]= 3.7[33], p <.001). The attachment, minimization, and directive control sub-scales were non-significant; pre-test caregiver mean scores for the non-significant subdomains were in a desirable range and indicated limited room for improvement. Caregivers who completed the ABC intervention also demonstrated statistically significant improvements in parental self-efficacy (t[df]= -2.1[33], p =.046).

Conclusion/Implications: Despite the small sample, results demonstrate positive improvements in how CW-involved caregivers perceived their responses to their young child’s crying queues, spoiling, and their personal sense of self-efficacy in completing parenting tasks. These findings are promising given recent literature indicating the importance of parental self-efficacy in preventing child abuse above and beyond parenting skill acquisition and increased knowledge (i.e., Whitcombe-Dobbs et al., 2019). Potential practice implications include tailoring parenting interventions to incorporate or enhance self-efficacy in specific protective parenting tasks and assessing parental self-efficacy during initial CW intake in conjunction with incorporating parental voice to inform service selection and parental buy-in. Future research is needed to corroborate these findings particularly among high-risk populations.