Fostering Emotional Availability in Mother-Child-Dyads With an Immigrant Background: A Randomized-Controlled-Trial on the Effects of the Early Prevention Program First Steps.

Background: In many Western countries like Germany, the social integration of children with an immigrant background has become an urgent social tasks. The probability of them living in high-risk environments and being disadvantaged regarding health and education-related variables is still relatively higher. Yet, promoting language acquisition is not the only relevant factor for their social integration, but also the support of earlier developmental processes associated with adequate early parenting in their first months of life. The Emotional Availability Scales (EAS) measure the quality of caregiver-child-interactions as an indicator of the quality of their relationship and thus of such early parenting, focusing on mutual and emotional aspects of their interaction. Method: This pilot study examined in a randomized controlled trial the effects of the prevention project First Steps regarding the hypothesis that the Emotional Availability (EA) improved to a greater extent in "difficult-to-reach" immigrant mother-child dyads in a psychoanalytically oriented early intervention (A, FIRST STEPS) compared to a usual care intervention (B) offered by paraprofessionals with an immigrant background. A sample of Results and Conclusion: Different from what was expected, repeated ANOVAs revealed no significant pre-post group differences for the parental dimensions. For the child dimensions the effect of time of measurement was highly significant, which can be interpreted as mostly natural developmental effects. Still, on the level of simple main effects for each intervention, only in the FIRST STEPS groups child Clinical Trial Registration: [https://clinicaltrials.gov], identifier [DRKS00004632].