Evaluating Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE) with a Professional Sample

Abstract

The Child-Adult Relationship Enhancement (CARE) model is a prevention model designed to teach parent management skills to any adult who interacts with children (Gurwitch et al., 2016). To date, the limited published studies on CARE effectiveness have been conducted with parents or foster caregivers of children (Gurwitch et al., 2016; Messer et al., 2018; Schilling et al., 2016; Wood et al., 2017). The current study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the CARE workshops through measurement of knowledge, trainees’ reported perceived effectiveness, and trainee-reported daily use of CARE skills. The current study found that trainees’ knowledge of CARE significantly increased one day post-CARE workshop and that the gains remained consistent one-month after the workshop. No significant evidence was found to support any relationship between the trainees’ knowledge of CARE and their perceived effectiveness or self-reported usage of the skills.