Practice Profile: Early Family/Parent Training Programs

This practice includes programs that seek to provide families and parents with training and skills to help promote their children’s physical, mental, and social skills. The practice is rated Effective for reducing child problem behaviors for children whose families participated in early family/parent training programs, compared with control group children whose families did not participate in programming.

Practice Goals/Target Population

Early family/parent training programs are designed to provide families and parents with training and skills to help promote their children’s physical, mental, and social skills. The goal is to improve child outcomes (such as reducing problem behaviors) by helping parents successfully socialize their children. These types of programs generally target parents and families with children under the age of 5 years.

Practice Theory

Research has shown that chronic problem behaviors that emerge early in life can lead to later disruptive, more serious behaviors (such as delinquency and crime) during childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. As such, early prevention programs, such as family/parenting training, may be useful in preventing the onset of later antisocial, delinquent, and criminal behavior, by providing families and parents with services as early as possible (Piquero et al. 2009).

Practice Components

The practice generally includes two types of programs: home visitation and parent training. Home visitation programs usually involve healthcare professionals (e.g., nurses, doctors, or paraprofessionals) who conduct in-home visits with new parents (especially mothers) to teach them how to properly care for their children. Parents are provided with information, support, and/or training in regard to child health, development, and care (Piquart and Teubert 2010). One example of a home visitation program is Nurse-Family Partnership, which provides low-income first-time mothers with home visitation services from public health nurses to improve maternal, prenatal, and early childhood health and well-being (Olds et al. 2004).

Parent training programs involve individual or group-based sessions that can be conducted at clinics, schools, or other community-based settings. These programs focus on strengthening parents’ competencies with regard to monitoring and disciplining their children’s behavior and promoting their children’s social and emotional competencies. These types of programs also try to train parents to use positive, nonviolent techniques when managing children’s behaviors and foster a caring, responsive relationship between parents and children through modeling and role play (Piquero et al. 2016). The Incredible Years is an example of a parent training program targeting high-risk parents and children who are displaying behavior problems. Core topic areas include teaching parents ways to strengthen their relationship with children, using praise and incentives effectively, and using limit-setting and proactive discipline strategies to handle misbehavior (Webster-Stratton, Reid, and Hammond 2004).

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

Triple P: Positive Parenting Program

Fast Track

Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT)

Nurse-Family Partnership

The Incredible Years–Child Training Program

Family Development Research Program (Syracuse, NY)

Prevention Program for Externalizing Problem Behavior (PEP)

The Incredible Years-Teacher Classroom Management Program

Parenting Intervention to Prevent Early Conduct Problems and Improve Parenting Practices (New York City)

Make Parenting A Pleasure

Nurturing Families Network (NFN) Home-Visiting Program

Infant Behavior Program

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?