A co-designed website (FindWays) to improve mental health literacy of parents of children with mental health problems: Protocol for a pilot randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Mental health problems, such as behavioural and emotional problems, are prevalent in children. These problems can have long lasting, detrimental effects on the child, their parents and society. Most children with a mental health problem do not receive professional help. Those that do get help can face long wait times. While waiting, parents want to learn how they can help their child. To address this need, we co-designed a new website to help parents find ways of helping their child’s mental health problem while waiting to get specialist help. OBJECTIVES: To assess the acceptability and feasibility of a new co-designed website, FindWays, through a pilot randomised controlled trial. The protocol is registered with ISRCTN (ISRCTN64605513). METHODS: This study will recruit up to 60 parents of children aged two-twelve years old referred to a paediatrician for behavioural and/or emotional problems. Participants will be randomly allocated by computer generated number sequence to either the intervention or control group. Intervention group participants will receive access to the FindWays website to help them manage their child’s mental health problem while they wait to see the paediatrician. Acceptability and feasibility will be assessed over the 4-month intervention through mixed methods including: recruitment, adherence, retention, net promoter score (quantitative measures) and semi-structured interviews to gain an in-depth understanding of parents’ experience and potential adverse effects (qualitative measure). Secondary outcomes measured by parent survey at 4-months post randomisation include child mental health, parent mental health, impact of the child’s mental health problem on their functioning and family, and health service use and associated costs. RESULTS: Recruitment commenced June 2022 with publication expected in October 2023. CONCLUSION: This study will provide novel data on the acceptability and feasibility of a new website co-designed with parents to help them find ways of managing their child’s behaviour and emotions.