The Infant Caregiver Project at the University has been awarded a $3.3 million grant by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for a 5-year research project focusing on services and skills for high-risk families.

Mary Dozier, Amy E. du Pont Chair in Child Development in the Department of Psychology and principal investigator of the Infant Caregiver Project, says the study will provide specialized services for parents who have neglected their children. It will be conducted in conjunction with the Children and Youth Division of the Philadelphia Department of Human Services.

“When young children experience early neglect and/or foster care, they are at increased risk for a range of behavioral and biobehavioral problems,” Dozier says. “These neglecting parents rarely have the skills they need for helping children overcome these vulnerabilities.”

Dozier, who has been studying the adjustment of young children in foster care since coming to UD in 1993, is internationally recognized for her research on early childhood experience and on disruptions in foster care.

During the study, children will be randomly assigned to one of two treatment groups and parents will receive a series of 10 home training sessions, with research measures administered before and after the training. The research team then will assess the short-term and long-term outcomes of the intervention, including assessments of attachment, behavior problems and neuroendocrine regulation.

“We expect parents’ skills to be enhanced in terms of their sensitivity to children’s distress and in their ability to follow children’s lead,” Dozier says. “As the result of these changes, we expect children to develop more trusting relationships with their parents and to develop better behavioral control and more adequate biological regulation.”

Dozier says the Infant Caregiver Project has studied the challenges facing babies in foster care for the past decade and identified several key issues.

“Our intervention specifically targets those issues,” she says. “We were able to make a case to NIMH, the funding agency, that our work was theoretically sound, potentially important and feasible.”

Dozier is known for “translational research”—research that translates basic science into prevention and intervention strategies.