kContact: Keeping Contact between parents and children in care. A trial of an enhanced model of contact with parents to reduce child distress and improve children's emotional safety.

This stage involves testing the effectiveness of an enhanced model of contact (the intervention) for parents and children in Out Of Home Care who are in permanent foster care or kinship care placements. The proposed intervention draws from the protocols of two key programs “Visit Coaching” (Beyer, 2004, 2008) and a strengths based approach to supervised contact (Smith, Shapiro, Sperry, & LeBuffe, 2014). The intervention consists of increased preparation for contact for parents, provision of guidance about activities for parents and their children during contact, improving communication between all parties, and debriefing after contact. Intervention: The intervention for each child and parent will be delivered by by the parent’s Key Worker within the out-of-home care program (the practitioner who has an existing relationship with the parent). The intervention includes the following aims: - To establish or maintain a constructive relationship with parents; - To support the parent to attend visits and plan age appropriate activities to do with their child. The intervention will include the following components: - Orientation to discuss the intervention, expectations and concerns; - Assessment of the children’s needs to be met in visits; - Confirmation of attendance at visits; - Preparation to identify the goals and aims they would like to achieve during visits with their children and plan activities that consistent with the child’s needs and the parent’s goals; - Follow up support, feedback and planning; - Reviews of progress and new goal setting. Resources will be provided to staff and parents to assist in visit planning, preparation and providing post visit support to parents. To ensure fidelity and adherance to the intervention protocol. Key workers responsible for the intervention delivery will attend training sessions, complete intervention checklists to ensure each component is provided to parents and will complete interviews prior to the intervention implementation and at follow up. The intervention will be supported by the research team until the conclusion of data collection, after approximately 9 months. Parents will receive a 1x up to 1 hour session (including preparation and follow up) for each visit they attend with their children. The intervention will be delivered on at least 2 occasions between baseline and follow up dependent upon their case management plan. The intervention will be administered face to face or over the phone depending upon the parent's needs.