Improving parent-child relationships: Effects of the your family, your neighborhood intervention

Your Family, Your Neighborhood (YFYN) was developed to strengthen parent-child relationships among families living in low-income and subsidized housing communities, using a dual-generation approach. Few, if any, family-based interventions with a primary focus of enhancing parent-child relationships target parents and their children between the ages of seven to 12 years living in subsidized housing communities. This study aimed to fill this gap and examine the effects of the YFYN intervention on parent-child relationships. This mixed-methods study was conducted in three low-income neighborhoods, in a city in the western United States. Intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis was conducted on the entire quasi-experimental sample (N = 101) and a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted on the per protocol sample (N = 70). ITT analysis indicated no significant group by time differences. However, results of the two-way ANOVA on the per protocol sample revealed a significant group by time effect, with treatment families demonstrating improvements in the parent-child relationship from pre-assessment to post-assessment compared to the control group. Focus groups were conducted with parent participants in the treatment group, in which they indicated their parent-child relationships improved after participating in YFYN, including feeling closer to their children, improving communication, spending more time together, and eating dinner together as a family more often. This study offers preliminary findings regarding the effects of the YFYN intervention on the parent-child relationship for families living in low-income and subsidized housing communities. Future directions for family-based and neighborhood interventions are discussed.