Embedding the Family Check-Up and evidence-based parenting programmes in Head Start to increase parent engagement and reduce conduct problems in young children

Abstract

Parent engagement (i.e. enrolment, ongoing attendance, participation quality) remains a major obstacle to fully realizing the benefits of evidence-based preventive parent management training in community settings. We describe an approach to parent engagement that addresses the myriad motivational, cognitive and pragmatic barriers parents face by embedding services in Head Start and applying a parent engagement model, the Family Check-Up, as a pre-intervention to augment parent training. In this article, we present the rationale for applying FCU to advance parent readiness for engagement and describe the process by which we partnered with the community to modify FCU to be most impactful for enhancing parent engagement in one specific programme, the Incredible Years Parenting Series. We conclude with preliminary data from our ongoing pilot trial that support our approach.

Keywords:

• parent engagement
• parent management training
• school-based prevention
• early childhood

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grant no. K01MH77097 from the National Institute of Mental Health to the first author.