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Current Research

The following projects are currently being conducted by staff and students at the Parenting and Family Support Centre.

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Connecting Communities

(funded by Brisbane Southside Division of General Practice)
2008-

This project provides a unique opportunity to examine the outcomes achieved by a large scale implementation of three evidence based interventions (Triple P-Positive Parenting Program, Friends and Mental Health First Aid Training) with culturally diverse and Indigenous parents, as well as disadvantaged youth and practitioners workings with families in the southern region of Brisbane. The project builds upon earlier work with the Brisbane South Division of General Practice involving the Every Family project, the first trial in Australia demonstrating positive population level outcomes of a parenting intervention for parents of 4-7 year old children.

The present project builds on and extends this earlier work in several important ways. It makes Triple P more widely available to a more culturally diverse range of families. To ensure the program is appropriately tailored to the needs of parent studies will be conducted examining the acceptability of the parenting intervention and modes of delivery to parent consumers. The project will attempt to build a model of culturally informed evidence based practice in consulting with parents from diverse cultures about children’s social, emotional, and behavioural problems. The findings from the studies of cultural acceptability will be used in the delivery of training of service providers and the implementation of the program with families. The efficacy of Triple P will be assessed by tracking the clinical outcomes achieved by service providers working with families. The project also includes two additional interventions (Friends and Mental Health First Aid) to be implemented concurrently, in the context of a broader framework aiming to connect services and create a sustainable model. These interventions are designed to enhance the capacity of the workforce to assist families from diverse backgrounds, including culturally diverse groups, Indigenous families, and disadvantaged youth.

Chief Investigators: Dr Alina Morawska and Professor Matt Sanders

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Family Transitions Triple P

(funded by the Australian Research Council)
2006-

This project will be a major step forward in providing an evidence base for interventions with divorced parents in Australia. Family Transitions Triple P- Positive Parenting Program is a theoretically based intervention that addresses the Australian Government's emphasised need of providing families with strategies to resolve relationship disputes and reduce the emotional costs to families experiencing divorce. Once evaluated for effectiveness, the collaboration of this project with Relationships Australia will enable the program to be readily accessible to the divorced parents in Australia.

Chief Investigators: Professor Matt Sanders and Associate Professor Alan Ralph
Project Coordinator: Dr Helen Stallman

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Family Transitions Triple P

(funded by the Australian Research Council)
2006-

This project will be a major step forward in providing an evidence base for interventions with divorced parents in Australia. Family Transitions Triple P- Positive Parenting Program is a theoretically-based intervention that addresses the Australian Government's emphasized need of providing families with strategies to resolve relationship disputes and reduce the emotional costs to families experiencing divorce. Once evaluated for effectiveness, the collaboration of this project with Relationships Australia will enable the program to be readily accessible to the divorced parents in Australia.

Chief Investigators: Professor Matt Sanders and Associate Professor Alan Ralph
Project Coordinator: Ms Kirsty Nicholls

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Parenting Knowledge

The objectives of this study are firstly to describe parenting knowledge within a general population sample. As the previous research has almost exclusively focused on high-risk groups it will be of value to know if the relationships consistently found between parenting knowledge and demographic variables in these samples can also be found within the broader population of parents. Further, the literature will be extended by examining how these relationships might differ depending upon the type of parental knowledge assessed. Secondly, this study aims to clarify the possible direct relationship between parenting knowledge and problematic child behaviour as very few studies to date have examined this relationship. Particular focus will be on understanding how the relationship might differ as a function of type of parenting knowledge assessed. The study also aims to further understand the relationships between parenting knowledge, parenting competence and parenting self-efficacy (PSE).

Chief Investigators: Ms Leanne Winter and Dr Alina Morawska

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Primary Care Triple P for Noncompliance in Young Children

The project aims to evaluate the effects of a brief version of Primary Care Triple P to parents in a group setting. Parents who have difficulties with disobedience of their children can take part in a group session which will teach them strategies to deal with temper tantrums and disobedience. Parents will be taught the disobedience management strategies. During the training sessions participants will be shown a videotape demonstrating procedures and will be provided with a Triple P Tipsheet. There will be time to practise skills and parents can benefit from discussing parenting plans with other parents in the group. Participants will be asked to complete questionnaires about the behaviour of their child, about their parenting style and about how confident and happy they are about being a parent. Questionnaires will be completed prior to and 5 weeks after the group sessions to determine the extent to which changes or improvements have occurred. The aim of the intervention is to provide parents with a parenting plan based on planned activities training (PAT). PAT involves providing children with engaging activities, discussion of rules in advance, advanced selection of consequences for both prosocial and disruptive or oppositional behaviours. Most likely the parents will learn how to use these strategies in other situations as well, which may improve parenting and child behaviour in general.

Chief Investigators: Dr Alina Morawska and Professor Matt Sanders

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Resilience Triple P for Families of Children Bullied by Peers

Around 1 in 10 children are bullied by their peers almost every day. Bullying increases risk of depression, anxiety, health problems, school difficulties and friendship problems. Many schools work hard to address bullying, however, research shows that school programs do little to assist frequent victims of bullying. Parents of children bullied by peers are often desperate to assist their children, but as yet there are no evidence-based programs to guide their efforts. Resilience Triple P is a program to empower children and their families to effectively address bullying. The program trains children to handle difficult peer situations and skills parents in supporting their children’s development and negotiating appropriate support from the school. Trialing of Resilience Triple P will commence in 2009 with 150 families concerned about bullying of their 5-10 year old children.

Chief Investigators: Ms Karyn Healy and Professor Matt Sanders
Project Coordinator: Ms Karyn Healy

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Starting Well Triple P

'Starting Well' Triple P is an antenatal parenting program which will be offered to pregnant couples expecting their first child. It aims to support them during the transition to parenthood. The program consists of group parent training sessions in combination with telephone consultations. "Starting Well" Triple P is currently in the program development phase and is expected to be evaluated by means of a Randomised Control Trial in 2007.

Chief Investigators: Ms Carmen Spry and Professor Matt Sanders
Project Coordinator: Ms Carmen Spry

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Testimonials and Participation in Triple P

Positive Parenting Program impacts on their perceptions of the acceptability and usefulness of Triple P – Positive Parenting Program, their memory of the parenting intervention and their intentions to participate in the program; (2) to examine the qualities of a testimonial which enhance parental engagement in parenting intervention. Parents will complete questionnaires assessing their socio-demographic characteristics, their parenting and their child’s behaviour. Following this they will view a short segment of the a Triple P DVD explaining the five principles of positive parenting. Before they watch the segment of Triple P parents will also see one of a number of testimonials supporting the program. Parents will be randomly allocated to one specific testimonial, which could be delivered by different people, with varying characteristics e.g., same or different gender, expert vs community leader, etc. Participants will complete a questionnaire assessing how useful, and acceptable they find Triple P, and how likely they would be to use or participate in the program. Participants will also have the opportunity to access additional DVD material after the study completion, and this will also serve as a means of testing how effective testimonials are in engaging parents with a parenting program.

Chief Investigators: Dr Alina Morawska and Professor Matt Sanders

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Triple P Direct as an Online Parent Support Strategy

The internet is increasingly becoming a modality of choice for parents looking for information on parenting and child development, and online programs have the potential to offer easy and flexible access to evidence-based parenting support. This project will develop am interactive web-based version of Level 4 Triple P and evaluate outcomes for parents of 3-8 year old children with behaviour problems. The way parents use the program and reactions to this mode of delivery will also be explored.

Chief Investigators: Professor Matt Sanders and Dr Karen Turner
Project Coordinator: Ms Sabine Joachim

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Triple P for Asthmatic Children

Childhood asthma is a major cause of school absenteeism, child emergency department attendance, and admission to hospital. While effective management strategies are available, parents and children often experience difficulties with adhering to prescribed treatments, increasing asthma morbidity and health system usage. Managing a child’s medication regime can be even more challenging when the child has behavioural problems. Parents play a key role in ensuring asthma medication adherence, however, there is a lack of proven interventions to assist parents with managing their child’s asthma. Parents who are educated about appropriate asthma management and understand the importance of adherence, may nevertheless struggle to implement the asthma management plan due to the child’s resistance and difficult behaviour. We are conducting a study evaluating an evidence-based parent education and skills-training program for parents of asthmatic children. This intervention is unique in offering parents specific skills in managing their child’s asthma and behaviour, in contrast to existing interventions which simply provide information to parents. The program is designed to improve asthma medication adherence. Poor adherence with asthma management plans and treatment regimes is not a trivial problem and has been associated with poor disease control, an increased risk of hospital admission, and an increased mortality rate. The parenting intervention will increase parents’ skills and confidence in managing their child’s asthma and behaviour, with the aim of reducing asthma morbidity, school absenteeism, and unscheduled medical interventions.

Chief Investigators: Dr Alina Morawska, Dr Scott Burgess, Dr Matt Sanders and Ms Caroline Gregory
Project Coordinator: Ms Caroline Gregory

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Triple P for Children with Mealtime Problems

Child feeding difficulties are very common and cause significant distress for children and parents, however, there is limited data available on the factors which contribute to problems, and very few interventions have been examined to assist families. The project will aim to (a) investigate the factors associated with mealtime difficulties of toddlers/preschoolers and families with and without feeding difficulties (Study 1), and (b) test the efficacy of a group-based behavioural parent training program with parents of children with feeding difficulties (Study 2). The development of an effective intervention for parents of young children with feeding difficulties would be an extremely valuable addition to clinical practice, given the absence of such a program, the commonality of feeding difficulties, and the consequences for both the child and family.

Parents in Study 1 will be include those who may or may not have difficulties with their child’s mealtime, and will complete a set of questionnaires and may also be observed during a mealtime. Parents without feeding difficulties who volunteer to participate will receive an incentive (e.g. attendance at a Triple P seminar, movie/food voucher), and general written feedback on their ratings on the various measures. Parents with feeding difficulties will be offered intervention, which previous case study and preliminary research would suggest is effective in reducing feeding concerns. This intervention will be evaluated in Study 2 of this project using a randomised controlled trial methodology.

Chief Investigators: Ms Michelle Adamson and Dr Alina Morawska

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Triple P for Grandparents

Grandparents are an important component of the family unit, and with changing demographic trends reflecting an increase in dual earner households, and the demand on child care services constantly increasing, the role that grandparents play within the family unit has increased significantly. Reflective of these trends, grandparents are now the biggest single providers of child care between birth and 12 years of age in Australia (ABS, 2006). Despite these developments there is still very little known on how grandparents cope with this newly found role, what challenges they are presented with, and if necessary what is the most effective way to intervene.

The aim of the Triple P for Grandparents Project is to explore the nature and demands of modern day grandparenting and develop a program specifically for grandparents to help assist them in their important role of being care providers. Once the program is developed it will be evaluated by a randomised control trial to examine the effectiveness of the program at assisting both the grandparents, grandchildren and family functioning.

Chief Investigators: Mr James Kirby and Professor Matthew Sanders
Project Coordinator: Mr James Kirby

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'Starting Well' Triple P

'Starting Well' Triple P is an antenatal parenting program which will be offered to pregnant couples expecting their first child. It aims to support them during the transition to parenthood. The program consists of group parent training sessions in combination with telephone consultations. "Starting Well" Triple P is currently in the program development phase and is expected to be evaluated by means of a Randomised Control Trial in 2007.

Chief Investigators: Professor Matt Sanders and Ms Carmen Spry
Project Coordinator: Ms Carmen Spry

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