Home safety with families being treated for child abuse and neglect.
A one-hour BST home visit can clear most safety hazards, even in high-risk families.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Three families in the child-welfare system got a short safety course in their own homes.
A counselor showed parents how to lock up cleaners, cover outlets, and gate stairs.
Each family got only a few visits. The team counted hazards before and after.
What they found
Hazards dropped in every home after the brief training.
Parents said the plan was easy and useful.
Counselor time stayed low, so the agency could help more families.
How this fits with other research
Vladescu et al. (2020) did the same thing with baby cribs. One 30-minute BST clinic visit taught safe sleep. Both studies prove a tiny dose still works.
Eugenia Gras et al. (2003) tried phone parent training years later. They also cut parent stress with little staff time. The 1986 paper first showed the low-burden idea at home.
Quiroz et al. (2023) flipped the learner. They taught kids, not parents, to avoid food allergens. Same BST steps, new safety skill. Together the papers say BST is a Swiss-army knife for any danger.
Why it matters
You can run a safety fix in under an hour. Pick the top three hazards you see on the first home visit. Model, rehearse, and praise once. Check next week. If it worked for child-welfare homes in 1986, it will work for your families today.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Home safety is a problem associated with child neglect. Previous attempts to remediate home safety problems within the context of an ecobehavioral approach to treating child abuse and neglect involved considerable counselor involvement. The present research demonstrates the effect of a less cumbersome intervention to reduce home safety hazards in three families being treated for child abuse and neglect. A multiple-baseline design across safety hazards within families and across each family was used to evaluate the effects of the treatment program. Social validation data from two of the families indicated satisfaction with the program.
Behavior modification, 1986 · doi:10.1177/01454455860101006