Intervention in Lower-class Surinam-Dutch Families: Effects on Mothers and Infants

Thirty-seven Surinam-Dutch lower-class families with a one-year-old child participated in "Instapje", a parent-focused home-based intervention programme. The intervention was devised to improve quality of parental support to the child on four behavioural dimensions: supportive presence, respect for the child's autonomy, structure and limit setting, and quality of instruction. The programme was presented to the parents in 16 weekly home-visits, starting when the child was 13 months old. When the children were 18 months of age, intervention group parents were indeed significantly more supportive of their children than parents in a comparable control group of 38 Surinam-Dutch families. Moreover, intervention group children scored significantly higher on the Bayley Mental Scale of Infant Development than children in the control group. No intervention effects were found on quality of the parent-child relationship and on parents' sense of competence in child rearing.