Kurzzeiteffekte und Akzeptanz einer Intervention für drogenabhängige Eltern: Das „SHIFT PLUS“ Elterntraining

Hintergrund Eltern mit einer Drogenabhängigkeit sind häufig in ihren elterlichen Kompetenzen eingeschränkt. Die Lebenswelt von Kindern, die in suchtbelasteten Familien aufwachsen, ist oft prekär, insbesondere wenn diese von der Drogensubkultur geprägt ist. Gleichzeitig stehen für Mütter und Väter mit Drogenproblemen in Deutschland keine evidenzbasierten, standardisierten Interventionen zur Verfügung.

Methode Mit SHIFT PLUS wurde ein modularisiertes Gruppenprogramm für drogenabhängige Eltern mit Kindern bis 8 Jahren entwickelt, welches ihre Elternkompetenzen und die Familienresilienz stärken sowie ihre Bereitschaft bzw. Fähigkeit zur Abstinenz fördern soll. Das Training basiert auf dem bestehenden „SHIFT“-Elterntraining für Crystal Meth-konsumierende Eltern und wurde für den gesamten Bereich der Abhängigkeit von illegalen Substanzen erweitert sowie um Module für Angehörige ergänzt. Die Umsetzung des Programms erfolgte an acht Praxisstandorten im Bundesgebiet in Kooperation von Sucht- und Jugendhilfeeinrichtungen mit N=87 teilnehmenden Eltern. Zur Evaluation der kurzzeitigen Wirkeffekte wurde ein quasi-experimentelles Forschungsdesign mit Interventions- und Wartekontrollgruppe zu zwei Messzeitpunkten realisiert. Ergänzend wurden Akzeptanz und Praktikabilität durch Teilnehmende und Trainer/innen bewertet.

Ergebnisse Das SHIFT PLUS-Elterntraining zeigte sich als praktikabel und hoch akzeptiert von teilnehmenden Müttern und Vätern, die berichteten familiäre Herausforderungen subjektiv besser bewältigen zu können. Die Wirksamkeitsevaluation zeigte zudem eine signifikante Reduktion depressiver Symptome in der IG sowie einen signifikant besseren Umgang mit dem Thema Sucht in der Familie. Ergänzend verbesserten sich beide Gruppen hinsichtlich psychischer Belastungen, Substanzkonsum und Elternkompetenz.

Schlussfolgerung Die Intervention bietet eine innovative Ergänzung zur evidenzbasierten Unterstützung suchtbelasteter Familien in Deutschland. Sie ermöglicht eine systematische Förderung elterlicher Fähigkeiten und familiärer Resilienz unter Berücksichtigung einer kooperativen Versorgung durch Jugend- und Suchthilfe. Der direkte Einbezug von Angehörigen in das Training gestattet dieser Zielgruppe zudem einen direkten, niedrigschwelligen Zugang zum Hilfesystem.

My Home is my Castle? The Role of Living Arrangements on Experiencing the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence From Germany

During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany, social restrictions and social distancing policies forced large parts of social life to take place within the household. However, comparatively little is known about how private living situations shaped individuals experiences of this crisis. To investigate this issue, we analyze how experiences and concerns vary across living arrangements along two dimensions that may be associated with social disadvantage: loneliness and care. In doing so, we employ quantitative text analysis on open-ended questions from survey data on a sample of 1,073 individuals living in Germany. We focus our analyses on four different household structures: living alone, shared living without children, living with a partner and children, and single parents. We find that single parents (who are primarily single mothers) are at high risk of experiencing care-related worries, particularly regarding their financial situation, while individuals living alone are most likely to report feelings of loneliness. Those individuals living in shared houses, with or without children, had the lowest risk of experiencing both loneliness and care-related worries. These findings illustrate that the living situation at home substantially impacts how individuals experienced and coped with the pandemic situation during the first wave of the pandemic.

[The contribution of epidemiological models to the description of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic]

After the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, an infection dynamic of immense extent developed. Since then, numerous measures have been taken to bring the infection under control. This was very successful in the spring of 2020, while the number of infections rose sharply the following autumn. To predict the occurrence of infections, epidemiological models are used. These are in principle a very valuable tool in pandemic management. However, they still partly need to be based on assumptions regarding the transmission routes and possible drivers of the infection dynamics. Despite numerous individual approaches, systematic epidemiological data are still lacking with which, for example, the effectiveness of individual measures could be quantified. Such information generated in studies is needed to enable reliable predictions regarding the further course of the pandemic. Thereby, the complexity of the models could develop hand in hand with the complexity of the available data. In this article, after delineating two basic classes of models, the contribution of epidemiological models to the assessment of various central aspects of the pandemic, such as the reproduction rate, the number of unreported cases, infection fatality rate, and the consideration of regionality, is shown. Subsequently, the use of the models to quantify the impact of measures and the effects of the "test-trace-isolate" strategy is described. In the concluding discussion, the limitations of such modelling approaches are juxtaposed with their advantages.

The Covid-19 containment effects of public health measures: A spatial difference-in-differences approach

The paper studies the containment effects of public health measures to curb the spread of Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in spring 2020 in Germany. To identify the effects of six compound sets of public health measures, we employ a spatial difference-in-differences approach. We find that contact restrictions, mandatory wearing of face masks and closure of schools substantially contributed to flattening the infection curve. The significance of the impact of restaurant closure does not prove to be robust. No incremental effect is evidenced for closure of establishments and the shutdown of nonessential retail stores.

A phenomenological approach to assessing the effectiveness of COVID-19 related nonpharmaceutical interventions in Germany

Nonpharmaceutical interventions against the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in Germany included the cancellation of mass events (from March 8), closures of schools and child day care facilities (from March 16) as well as a "lockdown" (from March 23). This study attempts to assess the effectiveness of these interventions in terms of revealing their impact on infections over time. Dates of infections were estimated from official German case data by incorporating the incubation period and an empirical reporting delay. Exponential growth models for infections and reproduction numbers were estimated and investigated with respect to change points in the time series. A significant decline of daily and cumulative infections as well as reproduction numbers is found at March 8, March 10 and March 3, respectively. Further declines and stabilizations are found in the end of March. There is also a change point in new infections at April 19, but daily infections still show a negative growth. From March 19, the reproduction numbers fluctuate on a level below one. The decline of infections in early March 2020 can be attributed to relatively small interventions and voluntary behavioural changes. Additional effects of later interventions cannot be detected clearly. Liberalizations of measures from April 20 did not induce a re-increase of infections. Thus, the effectiveness of most German interventions remains questionable. Moreover, assessing of interventions is impeded by the estimation of true infection dates and the influence of test volume.