First-time Pregnant Women and Their Partners
Conditions
Brief summary
The aims of this study are to determine whether a group-based parent support program (Family Startup) can lead to early improved parental sense of competence, family relations, and child development. Evaluation is based on a randomized controlled trial, with half of the participants receiving Family Startup and the other half receiving treatment as usual.
Detailed description
Some knowledge exists about effectiveness of high-intensity delivery of parenting support to subsets of at risk families. To the best of our knowledge, however, little is known about effects of universal primary prevention programs. The Family Startup Program is a structured format for implementing pre- and postnatal parenting support groups that prepare new families for their roles as parents as well as focus on enhancing parents' social network. The Family Startup Program gathers couples in groups and introduces participants to informal sources of support (e.g. by meeting and interacting with other new families) and to a broad range of community resources (e.g. financial advisers, child dentist, local solicitors, family counselors) providing them with information and parenting skills. The program content includes handling family finance, choice of paternity leave, couple communication, breastfeeding, network formation, ensuring dental health, sensitivity toward child signals, child rearing discipline, help-seeking behavior, home safety, and more. A second formulated rational behind the program is that strengthening father involvement, social network formation and access to family services will serve to enhance family relationships, including parenting, coparenting and couple relationship quality. Through participation in Family Startup, families receive a long term connection with a health visitor in the community and are introduced to a broad range of community services. This can be expected to benefit optimal health service utility and ease access to resources for families and children with need. Improved child outcome are the ultimate goal. No scientific evaluation of program effects of the Family Startup program on child or family outcome was previously conducted.
Interventions
OTHERFamily Startup (in Danish: Familieiværksætterne)
Manualized parenting support program; see Center for Socialt Ansvar (2013)
Sponsors
Aarhus University Hospital Skejby
Aarhus Kommune
TrygFonden, Denmark
University of Aarhus
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
NONE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
-Parents, mothers as well as their partners, expecting their first child in the municipality of Aarhus are eligible for the study. This is because of the universal nature of the original program. Mothers are included if interested regardless of the fathers' decline. Biological fathers, registered partners, as well as non-registered partners are eligible.
Exclusion criteria
* Parents are excluded from the study if they are under the age of 18 years * Not capable of managing own legal affairs * Choose not to accept any routine pregnancy scans. These
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| The Parenting Sense of Competence scale (PSOC) | measured when child is 9 months |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| Parenting Stress Scale | measured when child is 9 months |
| Breastfeeding duration | Duration before child is 9 months |
| Couple Satisfaction Index | measured when child is 9 months |
| Coparenting Relationship Scale | measured when child is 9 months |
| The Parenting Sense of Competence scale (PSOC) | measured when child is 18 months |
Other
| Measure | Time frame |
|---|---|
| School starting age | Before child is 8 years old |
| Ages and Stages Questionnaire | measured when child is 9 months |
| number of visits to the general practitioner | measured when child is 9 months |
Countries
Denmark
Outcome results
None listed