A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Long-Term Professional Mentoring Program for Children at Risk: Outcomes Across the First 5 Years.

Child outcomes due to a paid professional mentoring program, Friends of the Children (FOTC), were investigated across the first 5 years of an ongoing multi-site randomized controlled trial. Participants were 278 children attending kindergarten or first grade who were identified as "at risk" for adjustment problems during adolescence. The program was delivered through established nonprofit community-based organizations. Mentors were hired to work full time and were provided training, supervision, and support to work individually with small numbers of children. Recruitment took place across a 3-year period. Random assignment to the intervention condition or a services as usual control condition was conducted at the level of the individual, blocking on school and child sex. After the initial assessment, follow-up assessments were conducted every 6 months. Differences in growth curves across the elementary school years were examined in intent-to-treat analyses. Significant effects favoring FOTC were found in terms of caregiver ratings of positive school behavior and less trouble in school, with a trend for higher child behavioral and emotional strengths. Effect sizes were in the range typical in recent trials of youth mentoring.

Relationship processes and resilience in children with incarcerated parents.

Children with incarcerated parents are at risk for a variety of problematic outcomes, yet research has rarely examined protective factors or resilience processes that might mitigate such risk in this population. In this volume, we present findings from five new studies that focus on child- or family-level resilience processes in children with parents currently or recently incarcerated in jail or prison. In the first study, empathic responding is examined as a protective factor against aggressive peer relations for 210 elementary school age children of incarcerated parents. The second study further examines socially aggressive behaviors with peers, with a focus on teasing and bullying, in a sample of 61 children of incarcerated mothers. Emotion regulation is examined as a possible protective factor. The third study contrasts children's placement with maternal grandmothers versus other caregivers in a sample of 138 mothers incarcerated in a medium security state prison. The relation between a history of positive attachments between mothers and grandmothers and the current cocaregiving alliance are of particular interest. The fourth study examines coparenting communication in depth on the basis of observations of 13 families with young children whose mothers were recently released from jail. Finally, in the fifth study, the proximal impacts of a parent management training intervention on individual functioning and family relationships are investigated in a diverse sample of 359 imprisoned mothers and fathers. Taken together, these studies further our understanding of resilience processes in children of incarcerated parents and their families and set the groundwork for further research on child development and family resilience within the context of parental involvement in the criminal justice system.

A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Parent Management Training Program for Incarcerated Parents: Post-Release Outcomes.

The majority of incarcerated adults are parents. While in prison, most parents maintain at least some contact with their families. A positive connection with family during imprisonment is hypothesized to improve long-term success after release. One way in which departments of corrections attempt to facilitate positive connections with family is through prison-based parenting programs. One such program, developed in collaboration with the Oregon Department of Corrections, is the cognitive-behavioral parent management training program Parenting Inside Out (PIO). Outcomes due to PIO were examined within the context of a randomized controlled trial. Incarcerated parents from all correctional facilities in the state of Oregon were recruited to participate, and eligible parents who consented (N = 359) were transferred to participating releasing institutions. After initial assessment, parents were randomized to condition (i.e., PIO "intervention" condition or services-as-usual "control" condition) and then followed through the remainder of their prison sentences and to one year after release. Intervention condition participants were offered PIO prior to their release. Outcomes favoring participants in the intervention condition were found in areas of importance to parents and their children and families and to public health and safety at large, including a decreased likelihood of problems related to substance use and of engaging in criminal behavior during the first six months following release as well as a decreased likelihood of being arrested by police during the first year following release. The implications of the findings are discussed, including the critical need for scientifically rigorous research on multi-component parenting programs delivered during the reentry period.

Effects of a therapeutic intervention for foster preschoolers on diurnal cortisol activity.

Atypical diurnal patterns of hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity have been observed in samples of individuals following early life adversity. A characteristic pattern arising from disrupted caregiving is a low early-morning cortisol level that changes little from morning to evening. Less well understood is the plasticity of the HPA axis in response to subsequent supportive caregiving environments. Monthly early-morning and evening cortisol levels were assessed over 12 months in a sample of 3-6-year-old foster children enrolled in a randomized trial of a family-based therapeutic intervention (N=117; intervention condition, n=57; regular foster care condition, n=60), and a community comparison group of same-aged, non-maltreated children from low-income families (n=60). Latent growth analyses revealed stable and typical diurnal (morning-to-evening) cortisol activity among non-maltreated children. Foster children in the intervention condition exhibited cortisol activity that became comparable to the non-maltreated children over the course of the study. In contrast, children in regular foster care condition exhibited increasingly flattened morning-to-evening cortisol activity over the course of the study. In sum, improvements in caregiving following early adversity appear to have the potential to reverse or prevent disruptions in HPA axis functioning.

The consequences of antisocial behavior in older male siblings for younger brothers and sisters.

The contribution of younger male and female siblings' conflict and involvement in deviant activities with their older brothers to younger siblings' adolescent adjustment problems was examined in the context of parenting. Ineffective parenting during younger siblings' childhood had no direct effects on adjustment but facilitated their exposure to older brothers' deviant peers and activities. The effect of sibling conflict on adjustment was mediated by younger siblings' coparticipation in deviant activities with their older brothers during adolescence. Early sibling conflict and coparticipation in deviant activities synergistically increased the risk for younger siblings' adolescent adjustment problems. These empirical relations held in the context of parental discipline of younger siblings during adolescence. Sibling relationships entail a set of iterative social processes that strongly influence risk for adolescent antisocial behavior, drug use, sexual behavior, and traumatic experience. Variations in sibling influence were observed conditional on the gender combination of the sibling pair and on sibling age differences.

Older siblings benefit from a family-based preventive intervention for preschoolers at risk for conduct problems.

This study evaluated sibling effects of a family-based intervention aimed at preventing conduct problems in preschool-age siblings of adjudicated youths. Ninety-two families of preschoolers who had older siblings adjudicated for delinquent acts were randomly assigned to intervention and control conditions. Of these, 47 families had nontargeted school-age (5-11 years) or adolescent siblings (12-17 years) living at home. These families were considered in this report. The authors hypothesized group differences on antisocial behavior and positive peer relations for older siblings of targeted preschoolers. The authors examined outcomes of parent- and teacher-reported behavior immediately postintervention and 8 months postintervention. Findings revealed significant intervention effects 8 months following intervention for adolescent siblings on parent-reported antisocial behavior and positive peer relations. Teacher reports confirmed group differences for antisocial behavior immediately postintervention. Findings document benefits for adolescent siblings.

The early intervention foster care program: permanent placement outcomes from a randomized trial.

Preschool-aged foster children face multiple risks for poor long-term outcomes. These risks appear to increase with the number of placement changes experienced. The Early Intervention Foster Care Program (EIFC) targets the spectrum of challenges that preschool-aged foster children face via a team approach delivered in home and community settings. In this article, we report on permanent placement outcomes from the EIFC randomized clinical trial. Children in EIFC had significantly fewer failed permanent placements than children in the regular foster care comparison condition. The number of prior placements was positively associated with the risk of failed permanent placements for children in the comparison condition but not for children in EIFC. Type of prior maltreatment did not predict permanent placement outcomes. These results provide the foundation of an evidence base for the EIFC program as a preventive intervention to improve permanent placement outcomes for preschool-aged foster children.

Adult sibling expressed emotion and fellow sibling deviance: a new piece of the family process puzzle.

Seventy-three older siblings were assessed in early adulthood with the Five-Minute Speech Sample (FMSS) measure of expressed emotion. Sibling critical expressed emotion was linked with younger brother concomitant and future antisocial behavior, substance use, deviant peer association, increased rate of criminal arrests, and early onset sexual activity. Siblings of younger brothers with behavior problems were also more likely to be critical of, and to report negative relationships with, these brothers than were siblings of well-adjusted brothers. Sibling critical expressed emotion also predicted younger brothers' maladjustment 1-2 years later, after controlling for earlier sibling conflict and parent discipline. The findings accentuate the importance of understanding the influence of intrafamilial processes in the etiology of behavior problems.

Reducing juvenile delinquency with automated cell phone calls.

Using a sample of 70 juvenile probationers (39 treatment and 31 controls), we evaluated the effectiveness of a rehabilitation program that combined cognitive-behavioral training and automated phone calls. The cognitive-behavioral training contained six 90-min sessions, one per week, and the phone calls occurred twice per day for the year following treatment. Recidivism was measured by whether they were rearrested and the total number of rearrests during the 1st year. To test the impact of the phone calls, those who received phone calls were divided into high and low groups depending on whether they answered more or less than half of their phone calls. Those who completed the class and answered at least half of their phone calls were less likely to have been arrested and had fewer total arrests.

Reducing juvenile recidivism with cognitive training and a cell phone follow-up: an evaluation of the realvictory program.

The purpose of this research was to evaluate the effects of a cognitive training and cell phone intervention on the recidivism of 70 juvenile offenders. Median days to rearrest were 106 for the control group, 191 for the class-only group, and 278 for the class plus cell phone group. Using rearrest as the survival criterion, the survival ratios of the class-only and class plus cell phone groups were 2.64 and 2.94 times longer than the control group, respectively. After controlling for gender, prior arrests, and risk score, the Poisson regression indicated that the class-only and class plus cell phone groups were 51% lower in total arrests than the control group. These results suggest that cognitive training supplemented with a cell phone coach is an effective and cost-efficient intervention for reducing recidivism.