Introduction and Background: Latino children living in the United States are at increased risk for behavioral problems than their non-Latino peers (Coatsworth, Pantin, & Szapoznik, 2002), yet fewer than 25% receive the mental health care they need (Alegria, Mulvaney-Day, Woo, Torres, & Gao, 2007). Behavior disorders respond well to early childhood intervention (Lochman, 2000), and primary care clinics are emerging as innovative and effective settings for detecting and providing interventions for child behavior problems even before children begin school (Stancin, Perrin & Ramirez, 2009). The current study implemented a behavioral parenting intervention in a pediatric primary care clinic specializing in treating Latino, mainly Puerto Rican, bilingual patients. The outcome of this study focused on assessing feasibility of implementation, including evaluating desirability, acceptance and effectiveness of the intervention.
Methodology: The Chicago Parenting Program (CPP), a validated behavioral parenting intervention, was pilot tested in the MetroHealth Medical Center Hispanic Pediatric. Forty-four Latino parents with children aged 2-8 years were screened. Measures included weekly acceptance and helpfulness ratings, pre- and post-intervention responses on the Spanish versions of the Child Behavior CheckList, the Parenting Sense of Competency, and the Parenting Practices Scale, and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies scale for Depression, and the Therapy Attitude Inventory.
Results: Forty-four Latino parents of children were approached and screened for child behavior concerns. Thirty-five parents endorsed concern, 23 parents were interested in the intervention and 9 eventually participated. A total of 6 mothers completed the parenting intervention, which was rated as useful, desirable, and associated with an increase in parenting satisfaction and trends toward a decrease in maternal depression and child internalizing symptoms.
Discussion: Spanish-language primary care-based parenting groups were shown to be feasible and future research should focus on how to maximize the effectiveness of the intervention.