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The problem
Intervention: Families and Schools Together (FAST) programme, delivered in schools after school hours over approximately eight weeks, designed to strengthen parental involvement in children's learning and development and improve family-school relationships
Who it was tested with: Children aged five to nine years (mean age approximately six years) and their families in the USA and UK; at least 62% of USA participants from racial/ethnic minority groups.
Children or communities are compared with a group that did not receive the intervention, or followed over years. This is the design that best separates what the intervention did from everything else that changed.
"We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and quasi‐RCTs examining the effects of FAST, relative to waiting list, usual or alternative services, or no intervention, on outcomes for children (aged from birth to completion of compulsory education) and their families." The review employed a rigorous experimental design with meta-analysis of multiple RCTs, but the overall findings were inconclusive as most outcomes showed very small effects with confidence intervals spanning trivial to negligible differences, and only externalising behaviour showed a possibly important effect direction.
Moderate to low certainty of evidence due to attrition bias and recruitment bias in studies. No studies measured child adverse events, parental substance use, or parental stress. Most studies were relatively recent (2007 or later) and involved the intervention developer or FAST organisation, which may introduce bias. Long-term follow-up data limited to school performance.
Across countries and designs
1 study · 2 countries
