A Parent-Focused Intervention Programme to Promote Socio-Emotional Well-Being of Preschool Children: "Hug and Change"

Background/Objectives: Socio-emotional well-being during early childhood is closely associated with children's later psychosocial adjustment, social competence, and overall developmental outcomes. Parents play a central role in fostering these competencies through everyday interactions, highlighting the importance of parent-focused interventions. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of Hug and Change, a theory-informed parenting intervention developed for the Greek context, in promoting preschool children's socio-emotional well-being by improving psychosocial adjustment and social competence. Methods: A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design with an intervention and a comparison group was employed. The study included 123 parents of preschool children aged 4-5 years attending public preschools in Greece. Parents in the intervention group participated in the Hug and Change programme, which consisted of ten weekly group sessions combining parent-focused learning with structured parent-child activities designed to strengthen everyday parent-child interactions. Children's psychosocial adjustment was assessed using the parent version of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) while social competence was measured using the parent version of the Early School Behaviour Scale (ESBS). Outcomes were assessed before and immediately after the intervention. Results: The experimental group showed significant improvements from pre- to post-intervention on the SDQ and Social Competence, with reduced behavioural difficulties and increased prosocial behaviour and social skills; no significant changes occurred in the comparison group. Between-group comparisons confirmed significantly greater gains in the experimental group for the study's variables. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the Hug and Change programme represents a promising parent-focused intervention for promoting preschool children's socio-emotional well-being. Strengthening parenting practices and the quality of everyday parent-child interactions may contribute to improvements in both psychosocial adjustment and social competence, highlighting the potential of parent-focused interventions implemented within early childhood education settings.