Engaging parents and caregivers of system-involved youth in a sexual health intervention

All youth deserve access to accurate sexual health information to make informed choices about their own lives. System-involved youth often have less access to quality sexual health education and are at an increased risk of adverse sexual health outcomes. Providing programming to parents/caregivers to build their capacity as supportive agents for their youth's sexual health development is a meaningful approach to improving sexual health outcomes among youth. However, engaging parents/caregivers is challenging and requires effort. The current study aimed to increase understanding of the extent of effort needed to engage parents/caregivers of system-involved youth in a brief sexual health intervention to build their capacity to support their youth. Results indicate that researchers were able to engage parents/caregivers in the intervention, most commonly engaging them in the skill-based intervention topics based on parent-caregiver preference. Fifty of 91 (54.9%) parents/caregivers fully engaged in the intervention by receiving two of the six sexual health-related topics and an additional two partially engaged by completing one topic (2.2%). Furthermore, researchers were able to involve additional youth-supportive individuals in the intervention by allowing parents/caregivers to bring these other individuals to the intervention sessions. This engagement resulted from extensive time and effort, requiring researchers to contact parents/caregivers, on average, six times over 27.4 days to engage them fully in the intervention. Practitioners and researchers alike need to consider and appropriately plan for the substantial time and effort needed to achieve intervention engagement goals.