Safe Place and PolicyLab Awarded Grants to Improve Parent-child Relationship

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Philip Scribano, DO, and Joanne Wood, MD, from Safe Place: Center for Child Protection and Health and PolicyLab at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in collaboration with Steve Berkowitz, MD, a child psychiatrist at CHOP, have been awarded several grants to provide an intervention called “PriCARE” to foster positive parenting skills to reduce the risks of child maltreatment. 

“Many of our families report struggling with managing behavior problems in their young children," explains Dr. Wood. "PriCARE provides caregivers with the skills to support their children’s social and emotional growth and address common negative behaviors.”

This project began as a pilot at CHOP’s Primary Care, South Philadelphia, with Samantha Schilling, MD, serving as the lead investigator during her fellowship training in Child Abuse Pediatrics at CHOP.

By virtue of the positive findings from the pilot, the intervention will be further developed in two of CHOP’s primary care network sites (Karabots and South Philadelphia). This expansion will enable the research team to continue to evaluate and refine the model and expand its capacity to serve more children and their parents. 

“We are grateful to the Oscar Mayer Foundation and, more recently, to the Pew Charitable Trusts for their generous support, which will enable us to provide this intervention over the next three years,” says Dr. Scribano, director of Safe Place and one of the lead investigators.

“This work is an important step in helping to reduce the stress of parenting and the risks of maltreatment. By providing effective tools for parents to utilize in successfully navigating their child’s behaviors, both child and parents can benefit from this project.”