Steps to Cope: supporting young people affected by parental substance misuse and mental health issues in Northern Ireland

ABSTRACT

Objective: To summarise the impact of a brief structured psychosocial intervention, Steps to Cope, on building resilience in children and young people (CYP) aged 11–18 years in Northern Ireland affected by parental substance misuse and mental health issues. Steps to Cope was adapted from an existing evidence-based adult intervention, the 5-Step Method. Primarily developed as an individual intervention, practitioners from a range of services are trained to work through five structured steps with a CYP. Following pilot work, a subsequent project (2014–2019) has aimed to roll-out and embed Steps to Cope across Northern Ireland.

Method: The Resilience Scale for Adolescents (READ) is used as a pre- and post-intervention measure to assess the impact of the intervention on building CYP’s resilience.

Results: Preliminary analysis shows that nearly 200 CYP have engaged with Steps to Cope. Over two-thirds of CYP who start the intervention go on to complete it, and matched READ data for 80 CYP shows that there are improvements in both overall resilience and in the five domains measured. Many of these changes are statistically significant.

Discussion: The findings are encouraging, particularly when there is a dearth of evidence-based interventions for CYP affected by these problems. However, there are organisational and practical barriers to be overcome for the intervention to be more widely implemented.

KEYWORDS:

• Children and young people
• resilience
• Steps to Cope intervention
• parental substance misuse
• parental mental health

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Lottery Community Fund (Grant Number 10079151).