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Person To Talk to Who Really Cared: High-Risk Mothers' Evaluations of Services in an Intensive Intervention Research Program

NCJ Number
130039
Journal
Child Welfare Volume: 70 Issue: 3 Dated: (May-June 1991) Pages: 307-320
Author(s)
M E Pharis; V S Levin
Date Published
1991
Length
14 pages
Annotation
A sample of 30 mothers who were at high risk of developing dysfunctional parent-child interactions and who had participated for at least a year in an intensive intervention program at the National Institute of Mental Health, were interviewed regarding the changes they had made in their lives and the services they were offered.
Abstract
Each subject in the study participated in a structured interview in which they discussed how they first heard about the intervention program, what prompted them to volunteer for the program, the aspects of the program which they liked best and least, the benefits to themselves and their children as well as other family members, and which areas of their lives they had changed. In general, the women found the program to be very beneficial. They liked individual therapy sessions and infant assessment sessions most, as well as the other abstract components of the program; the items rated least important were the concrete services offered including provision of transportation and educational materials. The mothers' primary clinicians agreed for the most part with the items that were most important in the intervention process. The women felt that they had changed most in ways that bore on their psychological status and functioning. 2 tables, 1 figure, and 18 references (Author abstract modified)