Introduction

Contact is an important part of the out-of-home care system and for maintaining birth family relationships, but little research has sought the parents’ perspective. It is important to understand parents’ experiences of contact and the reasons why they may cancel contact visits, in order to both reduce cancellations and improve the contact experience and associated outcomes for all involved.

Methods

As part of the larger Australian kContact trial of a contact intervention, 90 parents having supervised contact with their children in long-term care were interviewed at baseline. The parents’ description of their contact visits is provided. Logistic regressions were used to estimate the odds of parent cancellation of contact visits for the predictor variables.

Results

Parents in the study reported a number of health, financial, and support issues, and had large numbers of children. Most of their children were in long-term foster care with visits primarily supervised by agency staff. In the multivariate analyses two significant results were found: parents were less likely to cancel visits when carers supervised contact and more likely to cancel when they, the parent, were on psychiatric medication. There was also a small effect suggesting that hosting contact visits away from an agency space may reduce parent cancellations.

Discussion

The need to provide supports for parents, particularly those on medication for mental health problems, to attend visits is an important finding from this study. Normalising contact visits by holding them in locations other than agency spaces and providing support for carers to supervise is recommended.

中文翻译：

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父母在看护孩子的监督下接触访问：与取消相关的因素

介绍

接触是户外护理系统和维持出生家庭关系的重要组成部分，但很少有研究寻求父母的观点。重要的是要了解父母的接触经历以及他们可能取消接触访问的原因，以便减少取消并改善所有相关人员的接触体验和相关结果。

方法

作为更大的澳大利亚kContact接触干预试验的一部分，90 名在长期护理中监督与孩子接触的父母在基线时接受了采访。提供了父母对其接触访问的描述。使用逻辑回归来估计预测变量的父母取消联系访问的几率。

结果

研究中的父母报告了许多健康、经济和支持问题，并且有大量孩子。他们的大多数孩子都被长期寄养，探视主要由机构工作人员监督。在多变量分析中发现了两个重要结果：当照顾者监督接触时，父母不太可能取消探视，而当他们（父母）正在服用精神科药物时，他们更有可能取消探视。还有一个小的影响表明，在远离机构空间的地方举办联系访问可能会减少父母的取消。

讨论

这项研究的一个重要发现是需要为父母，特别是那些因心理健康问题而服用药物的父母提供支持。建议通过将接触者安排在机构空间以外的地方来规范接触者访问，并为护理人员提供监督支持。