Can positive parenting program (Triple P) be useful to prevent child maltreatment?

This study aimed to determine the effect of the positive parenting program (Triple P) on child maltreatment, children's behaviors, and coping strategies of mothers.

This study was the pretest-posttest quasiexperimental design. Secondary care state hospital located in the Cappadocia region between January and February 2016. This study was conducted with mothers (n: 138) of children aged between 4 and 12 years, 126 mothers were available to finish the study. Triple P was provided to the mothers in totally three sessions as once per a week. Mothers filled the scales and parent-child information form before the intervention and just after the intervention. Parent-child information form, child behavior checklist, and ways of coping inventory were administered to the mothers.

It was determined that after the training, mean scores obtained by the children from the subscales of anxiety, social problems, somatic complaints, attention problems, rule-breaking, and aggressive behaviors decreased (P < 0.05) and desperate approach and submissive approach mean scores of the mothers decreased (P < 0.001) whereas their social support mean scores increased (P < 0.05). In addition, the mothers, who stated that they were frequently looking angry (17.4%), yelling (24.6%), sometimes humiliating (27.7%) to their children, and injured their faces (6.3%) in the past 1 month, said that they did these behaviors to their children at lower rate at the end of the training (3.9%, 17.4%, 19.8%, and 0.0%, respectively).

It was determined that Triple P was effective in reducing children's behavioral problems and improving mothers' strategies of coping with stress and contributed the reduction of emotional and physical abuse applied to children. It is recommended to ensure the continuity of these training programs.