Project Overview
This project represents a change in scope from our currently-funded R01, which seeks to examine the long-term crossover effects of the FCU on depression and suicide-risk using Integrative Data Analysis across three randomized trials. These randomized trials include a large sample of children and families who received the Family Check-Up (FCU) in early childhood and middle school. At that time, the FCU was delivered as an in-person model, and was adapted for both school and home delivery. Since that time, the FCU has been adapted to an online version which has been effective with middle school youth at enhancing parenting self-efficacy and reducing child emotional problems (Stormshak et al., 2019).
Given the wide-ranging negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on parent and child functioning, there is an urgent need for effective family-focused prevention/intervention programming that can employ telehealth-delivery formats to reach families in the midst of the current pandemic and future public health crises of similar scale.
The administrative supplement will adapt and test the efficacy of the Family Check-Up Online as a treatment to foster resilient family functioning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Research Aims
We will test the effects of the adapted FCU Online program in a randomized clinical trial with 150 families with youth aged 10 – 14 years, and assessed over 4 time-points across 6 months. We will examine the effects of the adapted FCU Online on key mechanisms of change, including parenting skills, parental depression, and parent/child self- regulation, that we predict will directly impact child and family functioning.
We predict that changes in these key targets of the intervention will impact participant’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including youth depression and behavior problems, the ability to cope with pandemic-focused stressors (e.g. dealing with changes in employment status or functioning; following mandated safety measures), and social/familial functioning (including relational support and risk for domestic violence).