Family Functioning as a Measure of Success in Intensive Family Preservation Services

ABSTRACT

An experimental research design was employed in evaluating intensive family preservation services to reunify families after out-of-home placement. There was a significant difference between the treatment group and control group in terms of family reunification, but there were mixed findings with regard to the difference between the two groups on measures of family functioning. Although more treatment parents than control parents felt their families were functioning better, there was no difference between scores for the two groups of parents on normed instruments designed to measure family functioning. The author describes the measures of family functioning employed in the evaluation and discusses the confusing findings along with implications for program evaluation.