ATTACH Program for Parents and Their Young Children to Improve Relationships and Child Health Community-Delivered Parenting Program Supporting Families Facing Stress

What this Trial Is About

Researchers are evaluating the ATTACH parenting program designed to support families with preschool children affected by toxic stress, such as parental depression, addictions, domestic violence, and poverty. The program aims to improve the quality of parent-child relationships by enhancing parents reflective function RF, which is the ability to understand both their own and their childs thoughts and feelings. This function is important for secure attachment and healthy child development, including cognition, communication, and inflammation. The study also explores whether the program can be effectively delivered by trained community agency professionals rather than researchers, and investigates its impact on immune biomarkers linked to inflammation. The ATTACH program consists of 10 to 12 weekly one-hour parent training sessions. Parents participate with their children aged from birth up to 32 months and are encouraged to involve a co-parent in 2 to 3 of the sessions when possible. The program is delivered at community agencies and includes dried blood sample collection from parents and children at select locations. This study uses a quasi-experimental design without control groups to reflect real-world service delivery in community settings. Participants will be involved in pre- and post-program assessments of parent-child relationship quality, parental reflective function, and child development using standardized questionnaires and observation tools. Additional evaluation includes examining immune cell gene expression and DNA methylation markers. Health professionals adherence to the program and their experiences with implementation are studied through interviews. Outcomes are measured immediately after the program and again three months later, with ongoing qualitative data collection to understand factors affecting routine program use in community settings.

ATTACH™ Program: Promoting Vulnerable Children's Health at Scale