Parent-Child Interaction Therapy in Child Welfare

Abstract

Parent training programs continue to represent the single most common type of services offered to maltreating parents. More recently, focus has shifted to adapting evidence-based behavioral skill-oriented parent training interventions for use with caregivers in child welfare. An adapted version of parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) for use with maltreating parents has robustly delivered two types of benefits—reduced recidivism risk among abusive parents and improved wellbeing and behavior among children, making it particularly appealing for child welfare service systems. These benefits have been found in randomized trials conducted in real-world settings, and conducted by researchers other than the model developer. Lower child welfare recidivism has been found among real-world child welfare populations including complex and chronic cases. Future work with PCIT in child welfare may need to focus on how to improve the implementation, deliverability and scalability of the model within these types of service systems. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)