Empowering mothers: does VIG increase attunement, decrease parental stress and increase parental self-efficacy in mothers who have survived domestic abuse?

Abstract

Video Interaction Guidance (VIG) is an intervention method used to support the development of attuned relationships. VIG has been found to be effective in supporting vulnerable parent- child dyads who have experienced adversities and/or are known to statutory services. However, interventions involving mothers and their children who have experienced domestic violence (DV) are underrepresented in the VIG research.

Three mother-child dyads who had experienced DV were recruited for the study. A mixed- methods design was used to investigate four areas of interest: the frequency of attuned interactions; parenting stress; parenting self-efficacy; the experience of mothers in participating in a VIG intervention. Each participating dyad participated in three cycles of VIG.

The results indicate that participants made gains in the number of attuned interactions and in parenting self-efficacy between the first and third cycles. Mothers’ parenting stress also decreased. Mothers’ experiences of the intervention were largely positive and reflected perceptions of change.

Date of Award	Dec 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Queen's University Belfast
Supervisor	Anthea Percy (Supervisor) & Maria McAleese (Supervisor)