APT evaluation in Open Door, London, v1
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Randomised evaluation of a brief psychological intervention for parents of adolescents: The Open Door Approach to Parenting Teenagers (APT), in London, England
IRAS ID
254697
Contact name
Alex Desiatnikov
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Open Door Young People's Consultation Service
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 18 days
Research summary
Adolescence is a challenging period for young people and their parents. Changes during adolescence bring increases in social, psychological and behavioural problems (such as gang membership and drug abuse), and most long-lasting mental health problems start during this period. One of the strongest predictors of adolescent outcomes is the quality of parenting they receive at this stage. Parents often struggle with parenting adolescents, leading to feelings of stress and incompetence which, when reaching clinical levels, result in physical and mental health difficulties for parents and their children. This puts significant strain on community, social and mental health services.
While the effectiveness of programmes to support parents of adolescents is certain, most are group-based and struggle to retain participants, especially amongst those who need help most: clinically stressed, and single parents. There are no standard care pathways for these parents, which leads to chronic problems and high long-term cost.
The present study aims to measure the effectiveness of the Open Door’s Approach to Parenting Teenagers (APT) - a manualised, six-session individual parenting intervention focusing on the relationship between parent and adolescent. This brief intervention, developed with awareness of the organisational realities and overarching aims of the NHS, has shown good results in a pre-post pilot study of 279 parents.
The next phase in evaluating this approach is ruling out spontaneous recovery, by randomly assigning participants to APT or a waiting list control and comparing their results on outcomes measures after the intervention, and again after 3 months. Furthermore, we will also measure outcomes of those participants who received APT 3 months after the end of the intervention. If successful, this study will have a major impact on communities around the UK - offering an evidence-based, non-proprietary intervention that can be easily disseminated.
REC name
South Central - Oxford A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/SC/0613
Date of REC Opinion
4 Dec 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion