Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams for families with co-occurring substance use and child maltreatment: A randomized controlled trial.

Background: Co-occurring parental substance use and child maltreatment has increased in recent years and is associated with poor child welfare outcomes. The Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams (START) program was developed to meet the needs of these families.

Objective: A randomized controlled trial was implemented to compare START to usual child welfare services on three outcomes: out-of-home care (OOHC) placements; reunification; and subsequent child maltreatment.

Participants And Setting: Families reported to child welfare services in Jefferson County, Kentucky, were eligible if they had a current finding of child maltreatment or services needed, substance use as a primary risk factor, a child under six years of age, and no other open child welfare cases.

Methods: Biased coin randomization was used for a control: treatment randomization ratio of 1:2. Analyses were conducted using intent-to-treat (ITT), though a subsample of families receiving services was also analyzed. Differences were assessed using t-tests, chi-square, and risk ratios.

Results: A total of 348 families including 526 children were randomized to START (n = 346) and usual services (n = 180). There were no significant differences between groups on the three outcomes in the ITT sample or the subsample that received services, though the START OOHC rate was 7 percentage points lower (relative difference: 21.6 %) and the reunification rate was 13 percentage points higher (relative difference: 27.6 %) in the subsample.

Conclusions: Although differences between groups were not significantly different, the relative differences were meaningful and this is the third study showing lower rates of OOHC among START relative to usual services. Additionally, the START reunification rate is higher than the overall U.S. average in spite of notable risk factors.