2018, Article / Letter to editor (Children and Youth Services Review, vol. 89, iss. June, (2018), pp. 171-178)A strong parent-professional alliance that increases over the course of care predicts positive outcomes of home-based parenting support. However, little is known about factors that influence the development or maintenance of the alliance in home-based parenting support, limiting professionals ability to optimize the parent-professional alliance and thereby the quality of care. Therefore, the present study examined whether voluntary versus mandated service involvement, previous involvement in similar services, parenting stress, child psychosocial problems, and care expectations were associated with early parent-professional alliance and predicted change in alliance during home-based parenting support services. Questionnaire data from 60 parents (M age?=?40.65?years, SD?=?6.81, range 23–55?years) and their professionals collected early and late in care were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results indicated that previous involvement in similar services was related to lower levels of early parent-reported alliance, whereas positive care expectations were related to stronger early parent- and professional-reported alliances. Moreover, care expectations predicted change in professional-reported alliance during care, with positive parent expectations predicting a decrease and positive professional expectations predicting an increase in alliance. Voluntary versus mandated service involvement, parenting stress and child psychosocial problems were not found to influence the alliance. These findings emphasize the need for professionals to discuss previous service involvement and care expectations as well as a need for future studies to identify other factors that influence alliance and alliance-building skills.
2017, Article / Letter to editor (Vakblad Sociaal Werk, vol. 18, iss. 3, (2017), pp. 25-27)Wat weten we over het belang van een goede samenwerkingsrelatie tussen ouders en hulpverleners in de hulp aan jeugdigen, ouders en gezinnen? Om hier zicht op te krijgen verzamelden en analyseerden collega’s van de Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen, de Radboud Universiteit, Praktikon en de Virginia Commonwealth University alle studies over dit thema. In dit artikel beschrijven de onderzoekers de belangrijkste bevindingen van deze overzichtsstudie om deze kennis toegankelijk te maken voor professionals in het sociaal werk.
2017, Article / Letter to editor (Journal of Child and Family Studies, vol. 26, iss. 4, (2017), pp. 961-976)This review systematically explored research examining the relation between parent-professional alliance and outcomes of psychosocial treatments provided to children, and their parents and families. Study findings and methodological characteristics were reviewed to investigate the evidence linking the alliance between parents and professionals to outcomes of child, parent, and family treatment as well as to identify factors that may influence the alliance-outcome association. A systematic review of the literature was conducted that included a search of three electronic databases using specified search terms, followed by a hand search to identify relevant studies. A total of 46 studies (37 published articles and 9 unpublished dissertations) met inclusion criteria. Overall, the findings indicated that higher levels of parent-professional alliance were significantly associated with improved clinical outcomes and stronger treatment engagement. However, some studies found that the parent-professional alliance was not significantly related to clinical outcomes or treatment engagement, and a few studies showed that higher levels of alliance were related to less positive clinical outcomes and lower levels of treatment engagement. Several theoretical (problem type, child age, parent sex) and methodological (source and timing of alliance measurement, alliance-outcome informants, outcome domain, timing of outcome measurement) factors were identified that could influence the alliance-outcome association. Together, our findings emphasize the importance of alliance awareness when working with parents as well as a need for future studies to investigate factors influencing the quality of the parent-professional alliance and alliance-outcome association in child, parent, and family treatment.