A 4-year follow-up compared the long-term effects of two treatments for severely conduct disorder children referred to a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS). Forty-two families received either the standard CAMHS treatment or a more intensive intervention. The intensive treatment involved a unit-based component for parents to practise new child management strategies. At the 6-month follow-up the intensive treatment group showed significant improvements on all measures of child behaviour and maternal mental health and improvements remained significant at the 4-year follow-up. By contrast, initial improvements for the standard treatment group, which were significant on only two measures, were not significant at the 4-year follow-up. The results suggest that the intensive treatment was advantageous in bringing about long-term improvements for these families. They also add to the growing evidence that interventions involving the rehearsal of child management strategies have better outcomes than those using more didactic methods of parent training.

There is a substantial literature reporting the co-occurrence of maternal depression and child behaviour problems. Behavioural interventions have proven efficacy in the treatment of conduct problems, and a number of studies have reported gains in parental mental health following parent training. The mechanisms by which this is achieved are not clear, but it is likely that interventions that include parent training in observation skills and exposure to success will impact on both the child's conduct problems and maternal depression. This paper reports on the outcomes of two treatments for children with severely disruptive behaviour, the standard treatment offered by a Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, and an intensive parent training intervention. It was predicted that the more specific skills training in the intensive treatment would make improvements in maternal health and child behaviour more likely. Significant overall improvements were found in measures of child behaviour, parental practices and maternal mental health. A correlation emerged between the improved child behaviour and the improved parenting strategies. Significant improvements for the intensive treatment group were seen on every measure. Significant improvement in the measure of maternal mental health contrasted with little change for the standard treatment group.

Research has identified risk factors that are associated with the development of conduct disorder and affect the quality of parenting. This has made it possible to provide preventive interventions, targeting families that are most at risk. Evaluations have shown, however, that getting effective preventive services to those most at risk is not straightforward and programmes need to address the problem of recruiting parents who, by virtue of their multiple problems, have traditionally been hard to engage. Emphasis is placed on the importance of using evidenced-based programmes in service settings in ways that are effective.

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Background:  This paper reports on outcomes for the Incredible Years (IY) parent programme with parents of 8‐13 year olds. Method:  The sample consisted of 280 parents of children at risk of adolescent antisocial behaviour, mean age 10.3 years. Results:  Paired t tests for both the per protocol (t(113) = 8.41, p < .001) and intention‐to‐treat (t(258) = 7.37, p < .001) data found significant improvements in child behaviour problems (ECBI). Statistically significant improvements were also found for parental depression and parenting skills. Conclusions:  The Incredible Years School Aged programme is effective in improving child behaviour, parenting competencies and parental mental health with parents of youngsters aged 8–13 years.