This review provides an overview of an important aspect of early childhood home visiting research: understanding how parents are involved in program services and activities. Involvement is defined as the process of the parent connecting with and using the services of a program to the best of the client's and the program's ability. The term includes two broad dimensions: participation, or the quantity of intervention a family receives; and engagement, or the emotional quality of the family's interaction with the program. Research that includes examination of parent involvement is reviewed, including examples from the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project. Factors that influence involvement are noted, including parent characteristics, qualities of the home visitor, and program features. The need for further measurement development and implications of these findings for home visiting programs are discussed.

One strand of home visiting research investigates effi cacy while another investigates under what conditions programs achieve outcomes. The current study follows the latter approach. Using a within-program design in a sample of 11 home-based sites in the Early Head Start Research and Evaluation study, this study found that three components of home visits (quantity of involvement including number of home visits, duration in the program, length of visits and intensity of service; quality of engagement including global ratings of engagement by staff and ratings of engagement during each home visit; and the extent to which home visits were child focused) represented distinguishable aspects of home visit services. Demographic variables predicted components of involvement, and home visit involvement components were differentially related to outcomes at 36 months, after controlling for demographic/family factors and earlier functioning on the same measure. Only one quantity of involvement variable (duration) predicted improvements in home language and literacy environments at 36 months. Quality of involvement variables were negative predictors of maternal depressive symptoms at 36 months. Finally, the proportion of time during the visit devoted to child-focused activities predicted children's cognitive and language development scores, parent HOME scores, and parental support for language and learning when children were 36 months of age. Implications for home visiting programs and policies are discussed.

The importance of supportive relationships for new parents has been the focus of both research and parenting interventions. Attachment style, typically viewed as a relatively stable trait reflecting one's comfort in social relationships, as well as social support, or one's perception of the social context, have both been found to be important for fostering engaged, involved parenting. Less is known, however, about how these variables work together to influence parenting behavior, especially in families at higher risk for negative child outcomes. Data were collected from 152 urban, predominantly African American, low-income parents when their children were 14 and 36 months of age. Results suggest that parents with more social support show greater increases in the frequency of positive parent-child activities over time, but that this effect is mediated by mothers' attachment style, specifically, their level of anxious/ambivalent attachment. Mothers with more social support tended to be less anxious/ambivalent about close relationships, and this in turn led to increases over time in the frequency of parent-child interactions. Mothers' tendency to avoid close relationships, however, while correlated with social support, was unrelated to changes in parenting behavior. Implications of these findings for program development, parenting, and the malleability of attachment style based on social context are discussed.

This paper presents results from the first large-scale outcome study of American Family Treatment Drug Courts (FTDCs)-specialised courts designed to work with substance-abusing parents involved with the child welfare system. The paper examines whether court, child welfare and treatment outcomes differed for 301 families served through three FTDCs as compared to a matched sample of 1,220 families with substance abuse issues who received traditional child welfare services. Propensity score weights were used to account for measured differences between the FTDC and comparison groups. Child welfare outcomes were analysed using analytical techniques that controlled for these inherently nested data (i.e. children within a family). Overall, the study found that FTDC mothers had more positive treatment outcomes than similar mothers who were not served by the FTDC. FTDC mothers were more likely to enter substance abuse treatment services than were non-FTDC mothers, entered treatment more quickly after their initial court petition than did non-FTDC mothers, spent twice as much time in treatment than did non-FTDC mothers and were twice as likely to complete at least one treatment episode than non-FTDC mothers. In addition, data from the study indicate that FTDCs influence a key child welfare variable of interest: FTDC children were significantly more likely to be reunified with their mothers than were unserved children.

Family treatment drug courts (FTDCs) are a rapidly expanding program model designed to improve treatment and child welfare outcomes for families involved in child welfare who have substance abuse problems. The present study compares outcomes for 250 FTDC participants to those of similar parents who did not receive FTDC services in four sites. Results show that FTDC parents, compared to comparison parents, entered substance abuse treatment more quickly, stayed in treatment longer, and completed more treatment episodes. Furthermore, children of FTDC parents entered permanent placements more quickly and were more likely to be reunified with their parents, compared to children of non-FTDC participants. Finally, the FTDC program appears to have a "value added" in facilitating positive child welfare outcomes above and beyond the influence of positive treatment experiences.