Changes in parenting and child behavior after the home-start family support program: A 10 year follow-up

Background: Home-Start is a parenting support program in which mothers experiencing difficulties in family life and parenting, receive weekly support at home from a volunteer. The present study extends the work of Hermanns et al. (2013), by examining self-reported and observed parenting and child behavior outcomes at 10.6 year follow-up.

Methods: The mothers of the Home-Start group (n = 59), who received Home-Start for on average 6.6 months, a comparison group, who reported elevated parenting stress and need for support (n = 56), and a randomly selected community sample (n = 36), reported on their feelings of competence about parenting, their parenting behavior and their child's problem behavior. Observational data were collected on five of the seven measurement occasions, until 8.8 year follow-up.

Results: Improvements on feelings of competence, consistent and non-rejecting parenting behavior and internalizing and externalizing problem behaviors during intervention period are sustained. That means that on the long term, the parent and child's improvements did not further improve, nor did they deteriorate. Observational measures showed a decrease in positive and negative parenting and positive and negative child behaviors in general for all groups.

Conclusions: Home-Start, a volunteer-based community wide family support program, contributes to positive short term changes, which are sustained in the long-term.