JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Early childhood intervention services (ECIS) support children with disabilities or developmental delays from birth to school entry, with the aim to achieve optimal outcomes for children and their families. Initial qualitative research demonstrated parents want their ‘key worker’ to also support their mental wellbeing. Poor mental wellbeing of parents of a child with a disability is of relevance to key workers due to its association with poor child-related outcomes. One of the major challenges key workers report in supporting families is managing parent distress and, due to lack of confidence, is a secondary negative impact on their own wellbeing

Objective:

This trial has been developed in response to the negative cycle of low professional confidence to support parents’ mental health, increased key worker stress and high turn-over of employees working within a disability service setting.

Methods:

A stepped wedge design is used to deliver and evaluate a capacity building intervention program, over a 9-month period, to key workers to improve both parent and staff mental wellbeing. The primary outcome is key workers’ self-efficacy in supporting parental mental wellbeing. Secondary outcomes include: manager self-efficacy in supporting key workers, staff perceptions of supervisory support; staff job-related mental wellbeing; parental satisfaction with their key worker; parental mental wellbeing; and cost-consequence of the program.

Results:

This study was funded in October 2014 supported by an Australian National Health and Medical Research Council Partnership Project grant (Grant number 1076861). Focus groups and individual face to face interviews were conducted February – November 2015 with 40 parents who have a child with a disability and 13 key workers to gain insight into how the disability service could better promote child and family health and wellbeing and to inform the development of the trial.

Conclusions:

The stepped wedge study design is practical and ethical for research with a vulnerable population group of parents of a child with a disability, providing high quality data with all participants exposed to the intervention by the end of the trial. Clinical Trial: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ACTRN12617001530314), retrospectively registered 3 November 2017.