Evaluation of a home-based parenting support program - Parenting Young Children - for parents with intellectual and developmental disabilities when there is a risk for neglect

Parenting Young Children (PYC) is developed in Australia as a support program for parents with intellectual disabilities or cognitive impairments. This research project is a four-year evaluation study where PYC is to be evaluated with an RCT-design and followed up qualitatively based on parents' and children's experiences. The target group is people with intellectual or developmental disability (IDD) and can be found as care receivers within the societal support: social services, health care and school. According to the Social Services Act (SoL), the Social Services has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that these families receive the support granted under the Act. The group is vulnerable.

Parenting Young Children as a method has since 2010 been implemented in several municipalities in Sweden with relatively good results according to clinical experience. However, there is no evidence of the method, and the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services has identified this as an important knowledge gap. The present research project intends to carry out a randomized and controlled study of this parental support method, supplemented with process data and qualitative evaluation of both the parents and the child's perspective.

The project is organized in three tracks and spans over four years. Researchers with both clinical and research experience from the group are involved the project.

• Track I study the effect of the intervention based on a randomized, controlled design regarding the parents' interaction with the children in the form of responsiveness to the children's signals, needs and to provide needs satisfaction and regarding goal fulfilment in increased parental ability, parents' self-efficacy, the child's mental health and cost-effectiveness.

• Track II study the parents' experiences of the PYC support based on a qualitative approach where interviews form the data collection method.

• Track III study children's experiences of their family relationships and everyday life before and after PYC through child interviews.

The research project has a clear interdisciplinary approach with researchers from different disciplines as well as a mixed method approach.