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The Impact of COVID on Early Intervention Parenting Support for Mothers in Recovery from Substance Use Disorder

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Abstract

COVID-19 adversely impacted parents with substance use disorders (SUDs) as evidenced by increased overdoses. This study used a qualitative approach to examine COVID’s impact on experiences and perceptions of a parenting program designed for mothers in recovery from SUDs, “Mothering from the Inside Out” (MIO), implemented through Early Intervention (EI) home-visiting services. Four EI programs participated in training and implementation of MIO. Subjects included 10 eligible EI providers trained in August 2019 or August 2021 and 11 mothers in recovery from SUDs. More mothers completed MIO during the pandemic compared to before. We conducted inductive thematic analysis of exit interviews and field notes, along with interpretation of process measures of intervention implementation. Initially, the switch to telehealth negatively impacted the provider-parent relationship but made engagement logistically easier for some mothers. Parent and provider participants reported the need for additional psychosocial support due to increased stressors, as well as ways that MIO helped them cope during the pandemic. COVID made EI enrollment of families more difficult in general; however once enrolled, telehealth improved retention in MIO, meeting a critical need during the pandemic.

Highlights

  • Parents with substance use disorders faced overlapping challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • A parenting program designed for mothers in recovery was deployed via home-visiting services just prior to COVID-19.

  • Implementation revealed expected pandemic-related challenges as well as unanticipated benefits for parents and providers.

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Funding

Supported by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health (award no. 1KL2TR002545), and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (award no. K23DA050731). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pediatrics, UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate, Springfield, MA, USA

    Elizabeth Peacock-Chambers

  2. Department of Healthcare Delivery and Population Science, UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate, Springfield, MA, USA

    Elizabeth Peacock-Chambers & Briana L. Jurkowski

  3. Department of Neurology, Boston Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Rajapillai L. I. Pillai

  4. University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA, USA

    Savannah Kangas

  5. Department of Psychological Science, University of California Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA

    Jessica L. Borelli

  6. Department of Pediatrics, Boston University Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA

    Emily Feinberg

  7. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Scienes, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY, USA

    Amanda Zayde

  8. Yale Child Study Center, New Haven, CT, USA

    Amanda F. Lowell

  9. Department of Medicine, UMass Chan Medical School-Baystate, Springfield, MA, USA

    Peter D. Friedmann

  10. Department of Psychiatry, UMass Chan Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA

    Nancy Byatt

Authors
  1. Elizabeth Peacock-Chambers
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  2. Rajapillai L. I. Pillai
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  3. Briana L. Jurkowski
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  4. Savannah Kangas
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  5. Jessica L. Borelli
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  6. Emily Feinberg
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  7. Amanda Zayde
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  8. Amanda F. Lowell
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  9. Peter D. Friedmann
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  10. Nancy Byatt
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Elizabeth Peacock-Chambers.

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Conflict of Interest

Dr. Byatt has received salary and/or funding support from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health via the Massachusetts Child Psychiatry Access Program for Moms (MCPAP for Moms). She is also the Medical Director of Research and Evaluation for MCPAP for Moms and the Executive Director of the Lifeline for Families Center at UMass Chan Medical School. She has served on the Medscape Steering Committee on Clinical Advances in Postpartum Depression. She received honoraria from Global Learning Collaborative, Medscape, and Mathematica. She has also served as a consultant for The Kinetix Group. The other authors have indicated they have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose.

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Peacock-Chambers, E., Pillai, R.L.I., Jurkowski, B.L. et al. The Impact of COVID on Early Intervention Parenting Support for Mothers in Recovery from Substance Use Disorder. J Child Fam Stud (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-024-02833-y

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