Evaluation of Family Help Trust - New Zealand Family Violence ...

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In summary, despite increased interest in this area, there are very few (if any)services seeking out and working with the ultra high-risk families that are thetarget population of Family Help Trust 4 .1.4.2 Summary of Home Visiting Services EffectivenessIn 1996 the Australian National Child Protection Council published a review ofHome Visitor Programmes in Australia in the context of preventing child abuseand neglect. This report concluded that home visitor programmes provideopportunities for children at risk and their families to reach their full potentialand participate productively in the community (Vimpani; 1996). In February2002, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Task Force onCommunity Preventive Services concluded "there is strong evidence torecommend home visitation to reduce child maltreatment." The group basedthis recommendation on a review of 25 studies that found overall a 39 percentreduction of child maltreatment in high-risk families (Bilukha et al., 2005);(Children's Bureau Express). However, some of these studies were not of ahigh quality and the actual effectiveness of these services is the subject of ongoingdebate. A feature of the current debate is the contention that homevisiting service do not show good results in preventing child abuse (Chaffin,2004; Chaffin & Friedrich, 2004).Recently, several reviews have shown disappointing results for homevisitation services both nationally (Centre for Child and Family PolicyResearch, 2005) and internationally (Chaffin, 2004). The issue of homevisiting programmes was comprehensively reviewed in an issue of The Futureof Children in 1999. (Gomby et al., 1999) summarise findings of evaluationsfrom six programmes and highlight key areas of change needed forprogramme improvement. They describe findings of programme evaluations in1999 as follows:4 Best Beginnings Plus programme in New York(www.healthyfamiliesamerica.org/downloads/eval_NY_bb_2004.pdf) targets substance usingparents of at-risk children although no outcome data on this service is currently available.20
“These findings are sobering. In most of the studies described,programs struggled to enrol, engage, and retain families. Whenprogram benefits were demonstrated, they usually accrued only to asubset of the families originally enrolled in the programs, they rarelyoccurred for all of a program’s goals, and the benefits were often quitemodest in magnitude.” (page 9).Gomby et al. (1999) concluded that “none found significant effects on all oreven a majority of the measures employed, and many revealed no positiveeffects at all” (p 12). Despite the generally poor findings in this area, there isevidence that well-designed home visitation programmes, based on evidencebasedbest-practice, may be of use (Fergusson, Grant, Horwood, & Ridder,2005). The most persuasive support in this area comes from the work of Oldsand colleagues, who developed the Nurse Family Partnership program (Oldset al., 1998; Olds, Henderson, Kitzman, & Cole, 1995; Olds et al., 1997; Oldset al., 1994). Evaluations of this programme have shown both long- andshort-term benefits.The strongest method for assessing long-term outcomes is to randomlyassign eligible parents to groups that do or do not receive the programme'sservices and then to follow the development of both groups over time. In thismanner, strong inferences can be made about the changes that are seen inthe group that are assigned to the programme 5 . This approach has recentlybeen employed by Fergusson and colleagues in looking at a group of at-riskfamilies in Christchurch (Fergusson, Grant et al., 2005; Fergusson, Grant,Horwood, & Ridder, 2006).The study used a RCT design in which 220 families receiving the Early Startprogramme were contrasted with a control series of 223 families not receivingthe programme. Families were enrolled in the programme after populationscreening conducted by community health nurses. This evaluation suggestedthat the Early Start programme failed to lead to parent- and family-related5 The problems inherent in this type of research design have been discussed by (A. M.Tomison, 2000).21
Page 1 and 2: "Programs may need to reconsider 'u
Page 3 and 4: ForewordIt gives me pleasure to pro
Page 5 and 6: Table of ContentsForeword..........
Page 7 and 8: AcknowledgementsMany people and org
Page 9 and 10: Executive SummaryFamily Help Trust
Page 12: The wellbeing of children matters t
Page 20 and 21: (Bilukha et al., 2005). “The Task
Page 22 and 23: suggests that the most effective pa
Page 24 and 25: eflected in fewer subsequent pregna
Page 26 and 27: experiences by saying: “One of th
Page 30 and 31: enefits in the areas of maternal he
Page 32 and 33: families that consented have been g
Page 34 and 35: In 1995, Family Help Trust, as part
Page 36 and 37: families have multiple risk factors
Page 38 and 39: iii)Outcome evaluation, discussed b
Page 40 and 41: their resources and exploit any eva
Page 42 and 43: In summary, an evaluation of the ef
Page 44 and 45: two data collection periods. In all
Page 46 and 47: Type I errorWith such a large numbe
Page 48 and 49: Along with the problem of low numbe
Page 50 and 51: iii)‘social desirability’ and
Page 52 and 53: to ensure the results of this evalu
Page 54 and 55: history of offending. An outline of
Page 56 and 57: Examination of Table 3.2 shows that
Page 58 and 59: Table 3.4 shows that the majority o
Page 60 and 61: From Table 3.6, it is apparent that
Page 62 and 63: partners, should this variable be o
Page 64 and 65: An examination of Table 3.10 indica
Page 66 and 67: CHAPTER 4OUTCOMES AT TWELVE MONTHSW
Page 68 and 69: • “do you have a washing machin
Page 70 and 71: • In the past six months, has you
Page 72 and 73: aseline had CYFS involvement at twe
Page 74 and 75: at least to some extent, due to inp
Page 76 and 77: From Table 4.4 it can be seen that
Page 78 and 79:
From Table 4.6 it can be seen that
Page 80 and 81:
target families may be due to a rep
Page 82 and 83:
4.3 SummaryChapter 4 has provided a
Page 84 and 85:
CHAPTER 5DISCUSSIONThe purpose of t
Page 86 and 87:
services, Table 5.1 shows a compari
Page 88 and 89:
5.4 Comments on Selected Areas of P
Page 90 and 91:
dental services are currently not a
Page 92 and 93:
Case 2Referral from obstetric socia
Page 94 and 95:
Perry (2004) emphasised that a key
Page 96 and 97:
eported cigarette smoking by others
Page 98 and 99:
ecause a) mothers would be busy wit
Page 100 and 101:
ehaviours such as criminality and s
Page 102:
Appendix I Risk Factors for Referra
Page 106 and 107:
Chaffin, M. (2004). Is it time to r
Page 108 and 109:
Evaluation Unit Ministry of Social
Page 110 and 111:
Ministry of Health. (1994). Report
Page 112:
Shirley, I., V., Adair, & Anderson,
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