About ABC
Nurturing and responsive caregiving supports healthy child development across communities, family traditions, and lived experiences. At the ABC Parenting Institute, we recognize that families bring unique strengths, perspectives, and caregiving practices that shape how parenting programs are received, understood, and engaged.
These experiences can influence beliefs about child development, participation in home visiting services, and engagement with the goals of the ABC program.
Our Mission
To nurture parent-child relationships through Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), an evidence-based parenting program grounded in science and community partnership.
Our Vision
We envision a world in which every parent and child is provided the support for their relationship to thrive. By partnering with parents and communities through Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), we seek to recognize and build upon parents’ strengths during the first four years of a child’s life. Every parent deserves a champion for their sensitive parenting, and every child deserves the foundation of a nurturing relationship.
Our Values
• Strengths-based, family-centered partnerships.
• Respectful collaboration with families, communities, and colleagues.
• Evidence-based practice, program fidelity, and continuous improvement.
• Data-informed decision-making to ensure effective and responsive service delivery.
THE BENEFITS OF ABC
Helps parents re-interpret children’s behavioral signals and respond sensitively.
Enhances children’s behavioral and regulatory capabilities.
Fosters the development of secure attachments between children and their parents.
Implementation Approach
To support consistent and effective implementation of ABC across settings, the Institute provides training and supervision focused on fidelity to the intervention model, active learning, and responsiveness to local implementation contexts.
The Institute partners with community agencies and trains parent coaches to support delivery of ABC in ways that are feasible, acceptable, and consistent with the core components of the intervention that are associated with positive outcomes.
In accordance with implementation science principles, ABC is delivered with fidelity to its evidence-based model while allowing for limited adaptation of language, examples, and supporting materials when appropriate to improve clarity and accessibility for participating families.
Language Access and Materials
ABC materials are available in multiple languages to support accessibility across service settings.
• ABC-Infant and ABC-Early Childhood manuals, along with most supporting materials, are available in Spanish.
• Supervision is provided for Spanish-speaking parent coaches delivering ABC in Spanish.
• In collaboration with implementing partners, supplemental training and consultation are available for bilingual parent coaches focused on implementation considerations and service delivery.
• ABC manuals and selected materials are also available in German, Mandarin, Norwegian, Russian, and Swedish.
The ABC Parenting Institute has also developed supplemental guidance in collaboration with external experts to support implementation with American Indian communities. These materials provide context relevant to community history, strengths, and family systems to support appropriate program delivery.
Implementation Consistency and Fidelity
ABC is implemented with attention to fidelity to the core intervention components that have been evaluated in empirical research. Adaptations are made only when appropriate to support comprehension, accessibility, or implementation feasibility, while maintaining the essential elements of the model.
Contact and Implementation Support
The goal of ABC implementation is to support consistent delivery of an evidence-based intervention across a range of service settings while maintaining fidelity and accessibility.