Clinical application of Assessment of Parenting Competencies (APC)

This paper is part of a symposium on music therapy with families with Kirsi Tuomi as Chair. It revolves around the clinical application of a new music therapy assessment model on parent-child interaction and parenting competencies.
APC was developed for emotional neglected children and their parents at a family care center that was considered an alternative to removal of child custody. However, as this is a very diverse population with many different both psychiatric and developmental difficulties, the APC might be applicable to other population such as families at child psychiatry units, child somatic hospitals, centers for refuges and other populations where it would be clinical relevant to assess the parent-child interaction.
APC is an observational and improvisational based assessment model evaluating dyads of parent and child (child age range is 5-12). It produces information (numbers, graphs, and descriptions) of parent-child interaction and parenting competencies including nonverbal communication, level of attunement in the dyad, and level of emotional support from the parent. It is based on video analysis and a fixed assessment protocol. It was developed through a completed PhD in 2012 project and has strong psychometric properties.
The clinical application of APC is currently being investigated in an explorative research study with 5-10 international music therapists working with different client populations. The aim is to investigate applicability within other client populations and to investigate how APC data can inform the music therapist, the families and the multidisciplinary teams in everyday clinical work.