The Efficacy of Parent- Child Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention on Behavioral Problems of Physically Abused Children and Parental Practices

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of parent- child focused cognitive- behavioral intervention on decreasing behavioral problems of physically abused children and improving parental practices. Twenty eight children aged 7-9 years from the Association for Protection of Working Children in Tehran and their mothers were selected by available sampling. Fifteen pairs of mother-child were assigned into the parent-child group and 13 mothers were assigned into the parent focused group. The mothers received 5 sessions of the combined parent-child cognitive- behavioral therapy package and the children received 8 sessions of the package. Posttest conducted at the end of the intervention. The study had a 2-month follow-up period. The mothers completed the Child Behavior Checklist (Achenbach, 1991), the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (Frick, 1991) and the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (Milner, 1986). The data were analyzed by mixed ANOVA. The results indicated that the cognitive- behavioral intervention significantly decreased internalizing and externalizing problems. The scores of the poor monitoring and the corporal punishment subscales of the parental practices scale decreased but the scores of the child abuse potential subscale didn’t significantly change. Furthermore there were no significant differences between the effectiveness of the intervention on behavioral problems, parental practices and child abuse potential in both groups, which reflected the central role of mothers in child abuse interventions. By clarifying the role of child and parent in child abuse interventions, the findings suggested these interventions could be applied to clinical settings and may reduce the child abuse phenomenon.