Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 1–15 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1359104515581717 ccp.sagepub.com An evaluation of the Parents Plus – Parenting When Separated programme Adele Keating 1,2 , John Sharry 1,3 , Michelle Murphy 4 , Brendan Rooney 1 and Alan Carr 1 1 School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Ireland 2 Lucena Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service, St John of Gods, Ireland 3 Parents Plus, Ireland 4 Health Service Executive, Ireland Abstract This study evaluated the Parents Plus – Parenting when Separated Programme, an intervention specifically designed to address the needs of separated parents in an Irish context. In a randomized control trial, 82 separated parents with young children were assigned to the Parents Plus – Parenting when Separated Programme treatment group and 79 to a waiting-list control group. They were assessed on measures of client goals, parenting satisfaction, child and parental adjustment and interparental conflict at baseline (Time 1) and 6 weeks later (Time 2), after the treatment group completed the Parents Plus – Parenting when Separated Programme. From Time 1 to 2, significant goal attainment, increases in parenting satisfaction and decreases in child behaviour problems, parental adjustment problems and interparental conflict occurred in the Parents Plus – Parenting when Separated Programme group, but not in the control group. These results supported the effectiveness of Parents Plus – Parenting when Separated Programme, which should be made more widely available to separated parents. Keywords Co-parental conflict, divorce, parent training, Parents Plus, separation Introduction Current divorce rates are 42% in the United Kingdom (Office for National Statistics, 2011), 43% in Australia (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2004) and 43–46% in the United States (Amato, 2010). Since the introduction of divorce legislation in Ireland in 1995, the rate of divorce escalated. In 2011, there were 87,770 recorded divorcees, in comparison to 35,059 in 2002 (Central Statistics Office, 2011). One in four families with children in Ireland is a single-parent family (Central Statistics Office, 2011). Corresponding author: Alan Carr, School of Psychology, University College Dublin, Newman Building, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland. Email: alan.carr@ucd.ie 581717CCP 0 0 10.1177/1359104515581717Clinical Child Psychology and PsychiatryKeating et al. research-article 2015 Article