Measuring the impact of a novel program in a Family Treatment Court: Quality of life, mental health, and self-esteem inventories in program evaluation

Family Treatment Courts (FTCs) accept parents in civil neglect cases where the parent is suffering from substance use and/or mental health issues. Modeled after adult drug treatment courts, FTCs coordinate substance use and mental health treatment, as well as other social support services for participants like housing and employment. Recently, one FTC in the United States began providing additional supervised and monitored visitation to participants within their FTC program, as well as one-on-one evidence-based parenting education. Called Enhanced Parenting Time (EPT), the goal of this innovative program is to motivate FTC participants with extra visitation while simultaneously improving parenting skills. As part of a program evaluation paid for by the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), three separate instruments were used to determine the impact EPT had on its participants. Comparison data collected from the Quality-of-Life Scales (QOLS), Mental Health Continuum – Short Form (MHC-SF), and Rosenberg Self Esteem scale (RSE) yielded differences between EPT participants and non-EPT participants. This research focuses on the use of these instruments in an impact evaluation of a novel treatment court program in the United States and contributes to evaluation methodology frameworks for treatment court programs.