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A Pilot Study Examining a School-Based Parent Engagement Intervention Following School Mental Health Screening

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Abstract

In this pilot study, we conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine the effects of a school-based engagement intervention on parent adherence to recommendations for children screened for social, emotional, behavioral, and adaptive problems at kindergarten entry. The aims were to evaluate the impact of an enhanced feedback session on parents’ adherence to service-engagement recommendations, compared to a standard feedback session, and to examine predictors of adherence to recommendations. Parent and teacher reports of the behavior assessment system for children, second edition, were used to screen children (N = 597). Parents of children identified as at risk for social, emotional, behavioral, and adaptive problems were randomized to the standard or enhanced feedback condition. Results offer preliminary evidence that the school-based engagement strategy following the screening resulted in increased parent adherence to sharing screening results with medical doctors. Analyses also revealed that after controlling for feedback condition, parents’ previous service use predicted adherence to the recommendation of sharing screening results with the teachers. These findings highlight the importance of continued examination of school-based engagement interventions for families in the early stages of seeking mental health services.

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Notes

  1. At the time this study was conducted, the BASC-2 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (BESS) had not yet been published.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Towson University, Towson, MD, USA

    Erin Girio-Herrera

  2. Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

    Julie Sarno Owens

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  1. Erin Girio-Herrera
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  2. Julie Sarno Owens
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Correspondence to Erin Girio-Herrera.

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All procedures performed in the studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendment or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. This research was not grant-funded.

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Girio-Herrera, E., Sarno Owens, J. A Pilot Study Examining a School-Based Parent Engagement Intervention Following School Mental Health Screening. School Mental Health 9, 117–131 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-017-9208-5

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