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Journal Issue: Preventing Child Maltreatment Volume 19 Number 2 Fall 2009

Preventing Child Abuse and Neglect with Parent Training: Evidence and Opportunities
Authors: Richard P. Barth

Future Policy

Massive evidence now shows that child abuse is associated with higher rates of spending on health care.89 The cost-effectiveness of investing in younger children is now broadly accepted.90 The case for implementing parent training programs to help reduce the high social costs of child abuse and neglect is strong. One of the first policy changes needed is to increase support for research trials on parent training to pinpoint “what works.” In addition to comparing the effectiveness of various parenting education programs, the research trials should contrast programs that focus on parenting education and those that aim to reduce related risk factors.

Child welfare services agencies should be allowed and encouraged, with incentives from all levels of government, to change their parent education practices as they modify their children’s services policies. The domination of federal child welfare services funding by worker training, reimbursement of foster parents, case management for children in foster care, and adoption subsidies (all entitlements under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act) leaves few resources to develop or implement high-quality parent education. Discretionary funds allocated through the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act and through Title IV-B of the Social Security Act should be more targeted on parenting education. Even without reconfiguring or increasing funding, accountability could be better focused on parent training. In its periodic reviews of state child welfare services programs, the U.S. Administration for Children and Families could explicitly address the quality of parent education. Child welfare services agencies could be required to provide data, during their federal reviews, about how many families enter parent training and how long they remain to help develop parent training that engages and educates parents in ways that they find helpful.91

Local agencies, in the meantime, will want to learn more about evidence-based parenting education programs and to develop ways to ensure fidelity in the delivery of such programs to their clients. At some point local child welfare services agencies must also make decisions about whether funds are best spent on higher-cost brand-name interventions like the Incredible Years and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy or on training in the common elements on which those programs are built.

Achieving further progress in parent education to prevent child abuse requires continuing efforts to develop effective interventions. The United Kingdom, for example, established a Parenting Fund that, now in its seventh year, has invested about $15 million in projects each year to develop, set up, and deliver evidence-based interventions aimed at parent support and education in the voluntary and community sector. The efforts in the United Kingdom are part of a broader endeavor across developed nations, including the United States, to increase the evidence base and sharpen the focus of parenting programs and to develop specific public policies targeting improved parenting beyond the traditional mechanisms of child welfare services and income support programs.92

Without this kind of effort, there is little reason to hope for broad governmental support. Demonstration funding to disseminate promising practices is a precondition for developing these programs. Once successful programs are developed, federal support to expand parent training is more likely. Across the board, in order to better support parents, policy needs to embody an evidence-based model of parenting linked to good outcomes for children. Although parent education can help families suffering from various kinds of distress, a stressful family environment is clearly not the optimal one for learning. For many years, considerable evidence has shown that outside stressors hamper learning and implementing the lessons from parent training programs. Policies that reduce the everyday stresses in the lives of families will also be an important part of effective service delivery.