Delivering Evidence-Based Parenting Services to Families in Child Welfare Using Telehealth

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ABSTRACT The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (denoted COVID-19) pandemic has shaken the foundation of services delivered to vulnerable families involved with or monitored by the child protective/welfare system. COVID-19 has changed the landscape of how children and families interact with the vital services provided by the child welfare system. Home visitation, which includes a bedrock of essential and transformative parenting support services for families involved with child welfare, was no longer safe or viable in the presence of COVID-19. The pandemic shredded safety nets. It made evident to providers, administrators, and policymakers how fragile our child protective system is. Under this strained state, child welfare agencies and mental health providers innovated service delivery systems. In Washington State, the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) worked with local service agencies providing evidence-based programs to revise program protocols. Provider teams and program developers worked together to transition in-person services to remote platforms by developing and delivering telehealth services to families. The pandemic created the conditions for a natural experiment in service delivery in Washington State. The natural experiment proved that telehealth services are a viable service delivery system; thousands of child welfare involved families were served via telehealth. We do not know, however, if these services were effective, or which families had the technological capacity to engage, or for those who did engage were they able to complete the program. Did online home visiting produce the expected outcomes? While online delivery was an innovation driven by the necessity in response to COVID-19, many questions remain. The potential is high, but little is known about telehealth in child welfare. This proposal is a three-arm effectiveness trail of an evidence-based home visiting program: 1) delivered online, 2) delivered in-person, and 3) usual care. We will assess the effectiveness of Promoting First Relationships (PFR: a 10-week model) to improve observed parent-child interaction and caregivers’ knowledge of social and emotional development in a sample of 358 caregivers with children under age 18 months at enrollment. We will also assess if PFR reduces child externalizing behavior and reduces out of home placements of the child into foster care. We will assess the cost-effectiveness of providing PFR via telehealth. We will address the degree to which families in Child Protective Services (CPS) have the technology needed to engage with telehealth services, as well as family satisfaction and compliance. Finally, we will measure service providers’ fidelity to the PFR model and their adherence to delivering PFR via telehealth. The proposed study leverages a longstanding partnership between the University of Washington and Washington State DCYF, overseeing services in child welfare to answer these questions.