Study protocol for Attachment & Child Health (ATTACHTM) program: promoting vulnerable Children's health at scale.

BACKGROUND: Children's exposure to toxic stress (e.g., parental depression, violence, poverty) predicts developmental and physical health problems resulting in health care system burden. Supporting parents to develop parenting skills can buffer the effects of toxic stress, leading to healthier outcomes for those children. Parenting interventions that focus on promoting parental reflective function (RF), i.e., parents' capacity for insight into their child's and their own thoughts, feelings, and mental states, may understand help reduce societal health inequities stemming from childhood stress exposures. The Attachment and Child Health (ATTACHTM) program has been implemented and tested in seven rapid-cycling pilot studies (n = 64) and found to significantly improve parents' RF in the domains of attachment, parenting quality, immune function, and children's cognitive and motor development. The purpose of the study is to conduct an effectiveness-implementation hybrid (EIH) Type II study of ATTACHTM to assess its impacts in naturalistic, real-world settings delivered by community agencies rather than researchers under more controlled conditions. METHODS: The study is comprised of a quantitative pre/post-test quasi-experimental evaluation of the ATTACHTM program, and a qualitative examination of implementation feasibility using thematic analysis via Normalization Process Theory (NPT). We will work with 100 families and their children (birth to 36-months-old). Study outcomes include: the Parent Child Interaction Teaching Scale to assess parent-child interaction; the Parental Reflective Function and Reflective Function Questionnaires to assess RF; and the Ages and Stages Questionnaire - 3rd edition to examine child development, all administered pre-, post-, and 3-month-delayed post-assessment. Blood samples will be collected pre- and post- assessment to assess immune biomarkers. Further, we will conduct one-on-one interviews with study participants, health and social service providers, and administrators (total n = 60) from each collaborating agency, using NPT to explore perceptions and experiences of intervention uptake, the fidelity assessment tool and e-learning training as well as the benefits, barriers, and challenges to ATTACHTM implementation. DISCUSSION: The proposed study will assess effectiveness and implementation to help understand the delivery of ATTACHTM in community agencies. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Name of registry: https://clinicaltrials.gov/. REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04853888 . Date of registration: April 22, 2021.

Assessing resiliency in Canadians experiencing social vulnerability: Psychometric properties of the CUPS Resiliency Interview Schedule and Resiliency Questionnaire.

Deficit models of care for clients experiencing social vulnerability have become increasingly unsustainable; and there is a shift towards models of care that promote and protect resiliency for lifelong health. We defined clients as socially vulnerable if they were living with poverty, mental health problems and addictions, disability, and social isolation. Scales to measure outcomes of resiliency-focused programming have limited reliability and have not been validated with vulnerable populations. The aim of this study was to develop and conduct preliminary psychometric assessment of two measures: CUPS (formerly Calgary Urban Project Society) Resiliency Interview Schedule (RIS) and Resiliency Questionnaire (RQ) for adults experiencing social vulnerability. To engage clients who were seeking integrated services at a social services agency, we developed the RIS and accessed data collected between April 2017 and December 2018. In a structured intake interview, the client and staff prioritised goals and identified resiliency in three domains: (a) economic, (b) social-emotional, and (c) health. On average, clients (N = 545) who completed the CUPS-RIS were 45.9 years old (SD = 12.62). For the CUPS-RIS, Cronbach's alphas at intake and outcome assessments were 0.80. Exploratory factor analysis demonstrated a four-factor solution with two unexpected results: executive functioning/self-regulation loaded with mental and physical health, and client education failed to load on any factor. We found significant improvements between client intake and outcome measurement points on eight of 12 sub-domains. As a brief self-report measure of resiliency, we developed the CUPS-RQ and accessed data collected between November 2018 and May 2019. Clients (N = 29) who completed the CUPS-RQ concurrently with the Resilience Research Centre-Adult Resilience Measure (RRC-ARM) were, on average, 42.46 years old (SD = 12.87). The CUPS-RQ was correlated with RRC-ARM, r = 0.819. In preliminary psychometric assessment, the CUPS-RIS and CUPS-RQ demonstrated satisfactory reliability and validity and show promise as measures of resiliency for agencies serving clients experiencing social vulnerability.

Aboriginal Children and Their Caregivers Living with Low Income: Outcomes from a Two-Generation Preschool Program.

The development of preschool children of Aboriginal heritage is jeopardized by the inter-generational transmission of risk that has created, and continues to create, social disadvantage. Early intervention programs are intended to mitigate the impact of social disadvantage. Yet, evidence of the effectiveness of these programs for children of Aboriginal heritage is limited. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a two-generation, multi-cultural preschool program on 45 children of Aboriginal heritage and their caregivers. We used a single-group, pretest (program intake)/posttest (program exit) design with follow-up when the children were 7 years old. We used an observational measure of child receptive language (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III) and caregiver-reported measures of child development (Nipissing District Developmental Screen), risk for child maltreatment (Adult-Adolescent Parenting Inventory; AAPI), parenting stress (Parenting Stress Index; PSI), self-esteem (Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale; RSE), and life skills (Community Life Skills scale; CLS). Using paired t-tests we found statistically significant increases in child receptive language scores between intake and exit, and repeated-measures ANOVA showed that these improvements were maintained up to age 7 years. For caregivers, Pearson's correlations demonstrated that risk for child maltreatment, parenting stress, self-esteem, and life skills were stable over time. Results of this study suggest that children of Aboriginal heritage can benefit from participation in a two-generation, multi-cultural preschool program. Their caregivers may have received greater benefit if issues of intergenerational transmission of the negative influences of residential schools were addressed as part of programming.