Parents as Partners: A U.K. Trial of a U.S. Couples‐Based Parenting Intervention For At‐Risk Low‐Income Families

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/famp.12289
• Date: 01 September 2017
• Author: David Hewison,Philip A. Cowan,Carolyn P. Cowan,Polly Casey,Naomi Mwamba,Lucy Draper
• Published date: 01 September 2017

Parents as Partners: A U.K. Trial of a U.S.

Couples-Based Parenting Intervention For At-Risk

Low-Income Families

POLLY CASEY*

PHILIP A. COWAN

†

CAROLYN P. COWAN

†

LUCY DRAPER*

NAOMI MWAMBA*

DAVID HEWISON*

Despite the well-established links between couple relationship quality and healthy

family functioning, and burgeoning evidence from the international intervention field,

there is little or no evidence of the efficacy of couples-based interventions from the United

Kingdom (U.K.). This study explored whether the Parents as Partners (PasP) program, a

group-based intervention developed in the United States, brought about the same benefits

in the U.K. The evaluation is based on 97 couples with children from communities with

high levels of need, recruited to PasP because they are at high risk for parent and child psy-

chopathology. Both mothers and fathers completed self-report questionnaires assessing

parents’ psychological distress, parenting stress, couple relationship quality and conflict,

fathers’ involvement in child care and, importantly, children’s adjustment. Multilevel mod-

eling analysis comparing parents’ responses pre- and postintervention no t only showed

substantial improvements for both parents on multiple measures of couple relationship

quality, but also improvements in parent and child psychopathology. Analyses als o indi-

cated most substantial benefits for couples displaying poorest functioning at baseline. The

findings provide initial evidence for the successful implementation of PasP, an American-

origin program, in the U.K., and add support for the concept of the couple relationship as a

resource by which to strengthen families.

Keywords: Couple Relation ship; Interparental Conflict; Parenting; Child Adjustment;

Intervention

Fam Proc 56:589–606, 2017

For decades, the British Government has invested in parenting programs as a way of

enriching the developmental environment for children in families not identified as in

distress, and as a way of providing remedial help for children in troubled families at high

*Tavistock Relationships, London, UK.

†

University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Polly Casey, Tavistock Relationships, 70

Warren Street, London W1T5PB, UK. E-mail: pollycasey@hotmail.com

The authors thank Family Action staff for their commitment to the project, both as caseworkers and dili-

gent data collectors. Special thanks to Richard Burge for his careful combing of records to gather referral

information for this paper. Thanks also to TCCR groupworkers Anna Fitzgerald, James Ganpatsingh,

Krisztina Glausius, Hendrix Hammond, Anna Learmonth, and Liz Mawle, for their expertise and dedica-

tion. Finally, thanks to the families who gave their time and effort over their course of the project.

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Family Process, Vol. 56, No. 3, 2017 ©2017 Family Process Institute

doi: 10.1111/famp.12289

risk for maladaptive development (Department for Education and Skills, 2007). Although

the use of the descriptor “parenting” implies that these interventions are for both mothers

and fathers, in fact classes and therapy sessions are attended mostly by mothers (Panter-

Brick et al., 2014). The notion of the couple relations hip as a resource to strengthen fami-

lies has been gaining traction in the United Kingdom (U.K.) and elsewhere, as reflected in

an announcement by previous Prime Minister David Cameron to double government fund-

ing for relationship support to £70 million over the remaining period of this Conservative

government (Prime Minister’s Office, 2016). The Prime Minister’s statement was followed

by a government-funded report issued by the Early Intervention Foundation (Harold,

Acquah, Sellers, & Chowdry, 2016), which reviewed conclusive evidence that unresolved

conflict between parents is associated with less effective parenting and more negative out-

comes for children and adolescents. Summarizing the existing findings, the report con-

cludes that there is some initial evidence from international studies that interventions for

parent couples in fact produce benefits for children, but no existing evidence-based pro-

grams have yet emerged in the U.K.

This paper describes an attempt to address that gap. Based on the results of successful

intervention trials in California, U.S. (Cowan & Cowan, 1992; Cowan, Cowan, Ablow,

Johnson, & Measelle, 2005; Cowan, Cowan, Pruett, Pruett, & Wong, 2009), the Depart-

ment for Education in the U.K. funded a feasibility study of the efficacy of the Parents as

Partners Program (PasP), comprising a 16-week couples curriculum modeled directly on

the latest version of the U.S. intervention, Supporting Father Involvement (SFI). This

report describes changes from pre- to postintervention for the first 97 couples to complete

the U.K. program. The first question addressed here is not whether participants fare bet-

ter than couples in a no-treatment control group, but rather whether the intervention pro-

duces the kinds of changes in U.K. participants that it did in the U.S. The second question

addressed here is whether the program produces differential effects for “high” and “low”

functioning couples, so categorized according to baseline scores on a number of indices of

family functioning.

COUPLE RELATIONSHIPS, PARENTING, AND CHILDREN’S DEVELOPMENT

Traditionally, the target of family intervention has been promoting positive parenting

practices and parent–child relationships. Harold and Leve (2012) argue that the most

“substantial dividends” can be gained by targeting investment at the level of the inter-

parental relationship because of the centrality of this relationship in the family system,

the high probability of spillover from the couple relationship into mother–child and

father–child relationships, and the potential for wide-reaching, short- and long-term, ben-

efits for families. These assertions are based on a large body of international rese arch

amassed over several decades attesting to the robust association between the quality of

the couple relationship and other indices of family functioning (e.g., Cummings & Davies,

2002; Fincham & Beach, 2010).

Strong, supportive, and harmonious interparental relationships have consistently been

linked to children’s enhanced psychological wellbeing (Cowan & Cowan, 2002; Davies

et al., 2002; Gryc h, Harold, & Miles, 2003) and educational attainment (Harold, Aitken, &

Shelton, 2007). Mothers and fathers who are satisfied in their relationship with each other

tend to establish relationships with their children that include warmth, responsiveness,

limit-setting, and maturity demands (Cowan & Cowan, 1992; Fauchier & Margolin, 2004;

Kaczynski, Lindahl, Malik, & Laurenceau, 2006; Sturge-Apple, Davies, & Cummings,

2006), the hallmarks of authoritative parenting (Baumrind, 1971). Not only are harmo-

nious parents more positive in their separate engagements with their children, but they

are also more likely to establish a positive coparenting relationship (McHale &

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