4 - (SYM 46) Early Intervention for Families Experiencing Homelessness: A Pilot Randomized Trial Comparing Two Parenting Programs

One in every 30 children in the U.S., or 2.5 million, experience homelessness (Bassuk et al., 2014). There is a lack of empirically based research assessing effective supportive interventions to address those needs in shelter environments. Given that over half of all homeless children in the U.S. are under the age of 6, it is crucial to investigate the feasibility and initial promise of delivering evidence-based parenting programs within a shelter setting. As part of a larger community-based service driven research project, the goal of the current study was to examine the feasibility, acceptability, and initial promise of having two established parenting programs being delivered within a time-limited format by shelter’s clinicians onsite to support sheltered children and mothers experiencing homelessness.

The participating sample consisted of 144 young children (18mon.-5years old; mean age = 3.48 yrs, SD = 1.09; 43.1% female; 78.5% Black/African American; 27.1% Hispanic) and their mothers who were recruited from a women’s homeless shelter and randomly assigned to 12 weeks of either Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT; n = 70) or Child Parent Psychotherapy (CPP; n = 74) delivered by shelter clinicians on-site. Attendance, fidelity, and program satisfaction were obtained. Families completed pre- and post-intervention assessments, including observational data on maternal verbalizations during a child-led play session. Both time-limited PCIT and time-limited CPP were successfully implemented with similarly high levels of intervention fidelity ( >90%) and satisfaction by mothers (85%). Completion rates were similar across both time-limited PCIT (76.6%) and time-limited CPP (71.4%).  Table 1 shows that time-limited CPP and PCIT resulted in decreases in children’s post-traumatic stress, parental stress, and increases in maternal positive verbalizations. A significant time by group interaction was noted for proportion of negative and positive parenting verbalizations, parenting stress, and child externalizing behavior problems (EBP). Specifically, mothers in time-limited PCIT had significantly greater reductions in negative verbalizations, parenting stress, child EBP and greater increases in positive verbalizations compared to mothers in time-limited CPP. Time-limited PCIT and CPP are acceptable, feasible, and hold significant promise for helping families within a homeless shelter environment and by extension, other transitional environments. PCIT offers a more promising intervention for targeting EBP and parenting.