Measuring the Effectiveness of the Connect Parent Group Within CAAMHPP

STUDY BACKGROUND: The Connect Parent Group (CPG) is an attachment-based, trauma­ informed, psychoeducational supportive group for parents of preteens (ages 8 to 12) and teens (ages 13 to 17) that was adopted by the Child and Adolescent Addiction Mental Health Psychiatry Program (CAAMHPP) in Alberta in 2008. Although evaluated by its developers in British Columbia, the effectiveness of implementation had not been evaluated in Alberta. PURPOSE: This quality assurance study assessed the effectiveness of the CPG on the relationship quality between the treated parents and the youth, identified the clinical characteristics of youth with and without CPG participating parents, and justified the need for further CPG services in CAAMHPP. METHODS: Pre-and-post CPG parent self-reports were assessed using the Parenting Relationship Questionnaire (PRQ) over a 3-year period. The clinical severity of youth with participating and non-participating parents was compared based on standardized clinical screening and outcome measurement instruments, as well as the referral rates for CPG exposed and unexposed youth. The need for further services was examined based on repeated referrals of the youth before and after parental exposure to CPG, in comparison to the base rate of repeat referrals of youth from non-participating families over the same 6-year time period. RESULTS: Youth with CPG-exposed parents had greater clinical severity pre-exposure and lower severity post-exposure compared to youth of non-exposed parents. CPG parents post-exposure reported improvement on items of the PRQ measures. Post-exposure, the youth with CPG-exposed parents had a 61% decrease in referrals to further mental health services. CONCLUSIONS: The results support the application of the CPG within clinical settings. The CPG-exposed parent-child relationship improvement reported in the PRQ appeared to be validated in that CPG-exposed youth were both distinct in clinical severity of mental health issues on presentation and had greater improvement on discharge with less readmission to mental health services.