Transporting attachment and biobehavioral catch-up to Norwegian child welfare services: A feasibility study

Transportation of evidence-based programs (EBPs) to a new cultural setting is often preferred over the comprehensive process of developing a new program. Intervention fidelity has been suggested as a predictor of successful transportation. The present study examined whether fidelity and parent behavior improved when implementing the U.S.-developed Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) intervention in Norwegian child welfare services (CWS). 11 child welfare workers received training and supervision to become ABC parent coaches. Fidelity was assessed through video-recordings of parent coaches' in vivo feedback at each home-visit session. Parent sensitive behavior was assessed using video-recordings of parent-child interactions, recorded before each ABC session. Mixed effects modeling showed that ABC fidelity increased over the course of training and supervision. Furthermore, parent behavior improved over the course of families' exposure to the intervention. These demonstrate that an EBP transported to a novel cultural setting can obtain promising levels of fidelity and intervention outcomes.

Automated summary

This study examined the fidelity and parent behavior when implementing the U.S.-developed ABC intervention in Norwegian child welfare services. The results showed that the fidelity of ABC increased during training and supervision, and parent behavior improved as families were exposed to the intervention. These findings suggest that transporting an EBP to a new cultural setting can achieve promising fidelity and intervention outcomes.