One Year Follow-up of Outcomes from the Randomized Clinical Trial of the Building on Family Strengths Program

Objectives Test the 12-month efficacy of an inclusive non-diagnosis-specific, parent education program with seven in-person sessions. Methods Parents of 110 children, 2–11 years old, with a variety of special health care conditions, were recruited to participate in a randomized clinical trial. At twelve months data from 104 parents were available for longitudinal analysis. Linear mixed models, with the interaction term of group by time, were used to assess the efficacy of the intervention over 12 months using data from 3 time points: baseline, 6 and 12 months. The outcome measures were self-efficacy, parent and child shared management of chronic condition, coping skills, parental depressive symptoms and quality of life. Results All of the outcomes improved within the intervention group over 12 months. Self-efficacy was the strongest outcome which remained significantly different from the control group 12 months post intervention, without any statistical adjustment (p = 0.045). The coefficient of the interaction term for study group (intervention or control) by time, quantifying the intervention effect, was statistically significant for four of five pre-specified study outcomes, favorably so toward the intervention group (p < 0.05, with the 5th outcome, parental depression, p = 0.052). Conclusions for Practice The Building on Family Strengths intervention was efficacious in improving self-efficacy, shared management, coping skills, and quality of life and decreasing depressive symptoms in parents, in particular for parents who were most impacted by the lack of these strengths and skills at baseline. These results are encouraging and future studies to investigate the efficacy of this intervention in an Internet-based setting or other modalities are encouraged.