NCJ Number
224547
Journal
Child Maltreatment Volume: 13 Issue: 4 Dated: November 2008 Pages: 334-346
Date Published
November 2008
Length
13 pages
Annotation
This article discusses the use of the Internet as a means of delivery of training for parents of infants.
Abstract
This article reports on the adaptation of a parenting program for delivery via the Internet, enhanced with participant-created videos of parent-infant interactions and weekly staff contact, which enables distal treatment providers to give feedback and make decisions informed by direct behavioral assessment. This Internet-based, parent-education intervention is noted to have the potential to promote healthy and protective parent-infant interactions in families who may not otherwise receive needed mental health services. The authors state that major obstacles exist to the effective delivery of mental health services to poor families, particularly for those families in rural areas. The rise of Internet use, however, is said to have created potentially new avenues for service delivery, which, when paired with the many recent advances in computer networking and multimedia technology, could add to fueling a demand for Internet delivery of mental health services. In this instance, the work used a version of the Playing and Learning Strategies Programs (PALS) modified for the Internet. A small set of case studies was employed to test the feasibility of this prototype, with three adolescent girls, aged 15 to 17 who were pregnant, in foster care and involved with the juvenile justice system. Figures and references