Evaluation of the New Orleans Intervention for Infant Mental Health

Early intervention for maltreated infants can improve mental and physical health throughout life and benefit families and society as a whole. The New Orleans Model provides intensive assessment and treatment for families of maltreated preschool children in foster care, with recommendations to court about adoption, or permanent return to birth families. The New Orleans Model appears to have led to better informed decisions about permanent placement and to better child mental health in Louisiana. The investigators propose an exploratory randomised controlled trial investigating the effectiveness of the New Orleans Model in the Scottish context, informing the development of an economic model to explore the potential cost-effectiveness. Families with a maltreated child under 5 years of age will be offered the New Orleans Model or "case management" i.e. quality assured services as usual, using random allocation. The investigators will measure outcome using well validated measures of parent-child interaction, cognition and attachment.