Parenthood and addiction programme: overview of the implementation of a family programme

BACKGROUND. The impacts of alcohol and drug addiction on parenting skills are widely known. However, parenting skills do not automatically improve when the parent is abstinent or when the treatment of addiction is solely targeted. Despite this reality, less than 10% of organizations treating addiction include parenthood support in their treatment plan. In Quebec, the Cap Sur la Famille program was developed to overcome this lack of service in addiction. This program is specifically designed for families with children 6 to 12 years of age affected by parents’ addiction. To ensure its agreeance with the needs of the targeted population and environment, the organizations frequently have to adapt the programs according to their reality. For this reason, various adaptations that respect best practices but also the capacity of organizations to implement the program was suggested. The actual presentation will provide a picture and challenges of the implementation of the Cap Sur la Famille program among different organizations working in the field of addiction treatment in Quebec.

METHOD. Since the deployment of the program across Quebec in 2018, seven different addiction centers have implemented the program. Fidelity of implementation of the program in its initial phase will be discussed for each environment according to the dimensions described by Dusenbury et al. (2003), which are adherence, dose, quality of program delivery, participant responsiveness and program differentiation. To measure the implementation of the Cap Sur la Famille program, after each session, the compliance grid and logbooks were complete by the intervener and parents filled out satisfaction questionnaire. Among the suggested adaptations of the program, five addiction centers offered the long version (12 sessions) in a group setting, and one provided the short version (7 sessions). Another one offered the long version but in an individual/family setting.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. For each session, approximately 86.3% of the activities were done for the parent's groups, 87.7% for the children's groups and 79.3% for the family groups. The main reason for not doing activities is lack of time, less pertinent for the group, replaced by another. In total, 42 families benefited from the program, partially or entirely (25.0% drop out). Families who drop out do so mostly from the first meeting for reasons such as lack of time, affinity with the group, or interest. In general, families say they were satisfied with the session and that the activities respond quite enough to their expectations. About families characteristics, 55.9% of these families were single-parent families, 73.5% of them being mothers and the average age was 38.6. At their entrance into the program, 47.1% of these parents’ drink alcohol three times or more a week and 41.2% of them use drugs at the same frequency. These results will be discussed according to the challenges of implementation of a parenting program in addiction centers: adaptation of the program, recruitment of families, schedule and animation among children with behavior problems.