Feasibility and Acceptability of a Culturally Adapted Family-Based Telehealth Intervention for Latine Families Impacted by the Child Welfare System

Despite the well-documented overrepresentation of Latine adolescents in the child welfare system and inequities in their behavioral health outcomes, Latine families experience significant barriers to accessing evidence-based behavioral health care. Limited culturally- and linguistically responsive family-based telehealth services contribute to lower service access rates for Latine systems-impacted adolescents. The present pilot study addresses this gap through culturally adapting an existing, empirically informed family-based intervention, and assessing the feasibility and acceptability of delivering the intervention via telehealth to Latine families impacted by the child welfare system. We conducted a pilot feasibility/acceptability trial of the intervention with eleven Spanish-speaking Latine caregivers and four bilingual Latine adolescents. Families’ and clinicians’ session feedback forms and data collected from individual qualitative exit interviews informed the iterative cultural adaptation process and telehealth intervention feasibility/acceptability outcomes. On session feedback forms ( n = 67 caregiver forms; n = 27 adolescent forms), eleven caregivers and four adolescents reported strong acceptability for telehealth sessions and clinicians. Clinicians were rated highly on showing support, listening, answering questions, encouraging discussion, giving information, and keeping sessions interesting (scale = 1–5; average ratings were 4.6–5.0 across domains). Caregivers reported high levels of satisfaction with the telehealth services they or their families received ( M = 4.6, SD = 0.4; 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Themes from qualitative interviews suggest caregivers found the intervention helpful, particularly in improving their emotion regulation and communication with their adolescents. Cultural adaptation of telehealth interventions for Latine families impacted by the child welfare system is feasible, acceptable, and has the potential to fill gaps in behavioral health services access.