Cultural Adaptations, Engagement and Outcomes of the Thailand Strengthening Families Program 12-16

Kannikar Nolrajsuwat

Introduction: The Thailand culturally adapted version of the Strengthening Families Program (12-16) was evaluated for high risk 12 to 17-year-olds. After the success of the SFP 6-11 in Thailand, the Thailand juvenile justice authorities wanted to develop and test a Thai version for older youth in detention centers. The funding for the cultural adaptation and evaluation came from the UNODC in Vienna on a grant. A cultural adaptation of SFP 12-16 was very successful in a large sample RCt of SFP 12-16 with Burmese refugee families (Puffer, et al., 2016). This EBI consisted of 14 sessions that targeted improving family relations, parenting skills, teen social skills and reducing drug consumption.

Methods: The experimental group included 37 families from different cohorts--on from Bangkapi School in Bangkok and two rural juvenile justice sites from both Ra Yong and Nakhon Swan Province. Of the families who began SFP 82% graduated from all 14 sessions. Using a pre-and 4 month post-test quasi-experimental design, the measurements include the Thailand standardized SFP parent survey that includes the Moos FES and Kellam POCA. The results were analyzed using SPSS with Cohen's d effect sizes calculated in addition to p. values in Anovas.

Results: All of the Cohen's d effect sizes were large for the family relations such as family resilience, communication, cohesion, organization and positive parenting. Youth positive changes were not as large and ranged from d-.77 for improvements in attention deficit, overt aggression (d.=.65) and depression (d.=.63) to a low of d =.34 for improvements in social skills of d=.34.

Conclusion: The Thai SFP 12-16 was successful with high risk families with high engagement and retention with large improvements in family relations, parenting skills and youth internalizing and externalizing risk factors. Future plans are to determine maintenance of these positive effects longer term and also check juvenile justice records for positive outcomes compared to a propensity samples of similar youth.

This abstract was submitted to the 2017 Society for Prevention Research Annual Meeting.