Cargando…

Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Childhood mental health problems are highly prevalent, experienced by one in five children living in socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Although childcare settings, including family day care are ideal to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing at a population level...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Davis, Elise, Williamson, Lara, Mackinnon, Andrew, Cook, Kay, Waters, Elizabeth, Herrman, Helen, Sims, Margaret, Mihalopoulos, Cathrine, Harrison, Linda, Marshall, Bernard
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3219588/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22047600
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-842
_version_ 1782216854960340992
author Davis, Elise
Williamson, Lara
Mackinnon, Andrew
Cook, Kay
Waters, Elizabeth
Herrman, Helen
Sims, Margaret
Mihalopoulos, Cathrine
Harrison, Linda
Marshall, Bernard
author_facet Davis, Elise
Williamson, Lara
Mackinnon, Andrew
Cook, Kay
Waters, Elizabeth
Herrman, Helen
Sims, Margaret
Mihalopoulos, Cathrine
Harrison, Linda
Marshall, Bernard
author_sort Davis, Elise
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Childhood mental health problems are highly prevalent, experienced by one in five children living in socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Although childcare settings, including family day care are ideal to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing at a population level in a sustainable way, family day care educators receive limited training in promoting children's mental health. This study is an exploratory wait-list control cluster randomised controlled trial to test the appropriateness, acceptability, cost, and effectiveness of "Thrive," an intervention program to build the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing. Thrive aims to increase educators' knowledge, confidence and skills in promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing. METHODS/DESIGN: This study involves one family day care organisation based in a low socioeconomic area of Melbourne. All family day care educators (term used for registered carers who provide care for children for financial reimbursement in the carers own home) are eligible to participate in the study. The clusters for randomisation will be the fieldworkers (n = 5) who each supervise 10-15 educators. The intervention group (field workers and educators) will participate in a variety of intervention activities over 12 months, including workshops; activity exchanges with other educators; and focused discussion about children's social and emotional wellbeing during field worker visits. The control group will continue with their normal work practice. The intervention will be delivered to the intervention group and then to the control group after a time delay of 15 months post intervention commencement. A baseline survey will be conducted with all consenting educators and field workers (n = ~70) assessing outcomes at the cluster and individual level. The survey will also be administered at one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. The survey consists of questions measuring perceived levels of knowledge, confidence and skills in promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing. As much of this intervention will be delivered by field workers, field worker-family day care educator relationships are key to its success and thus supervisor support will also be measured. All educators will also have an in-home quality of care assessment at baseline, one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. Process evaluation will occur at one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. Information regarding intervention fidelity and economics will also be assessed in the survey. DISCUSSION: A capacity building intervention in child mental health promotion for family day care is an essential contribution to research, policy and practice. This initiative is the first internationally, and essential in building an evidence base of interventions in this extremely policy-timely setting. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: 343312
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-3219588
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2011
publisher BioMed Central
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-32195882011-11-18 Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial Davis, Elise Williamson, Lara Mackinnon, Andrew Cook, Kay Waters, Elizabeth Herrman, Helen Sims, Margaret Mihalopoulos, Cathrine Harrison, Linda Marshall, Bernard BMC Public Health Study Protocol BACKGROUND: Childhood mental health problems are highly prevalent, experienced by one in five children living in socioeconomically disadvantaged families. Although childcare settings, including family day care are ideal to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing at a population level in a sustainable way, family day care educators receive limited training in promoting children's mental health. This study is an exploratory wait-list control cluster randomised controlled trial to test the appropriateness, acceptability, cost, and effectiveness of "Thrive," an intervention program to build the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing. Thrive aims to increase educators' knowledge, confidence and skills in promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing. METHODS/DESIGN: This study involves one family day care organisation based in a low socioeconomic area of Melbourne. All family day care educators (term used for registered carers who provide care for children for financial reimbursement in the carers own home) are eligible to participate in the study. The clusters for randomisation will be the fieldworkers (n = 5) who each supervise 10-15 educators. The intervention group (field workers and educators) will participate in a variety of intervention activities over 12 months, including workshops; activity exchanges with other educators; and focused discussion about children's social and emotional wellbeing during field worker visits. The control group will continue with their normal work practice. The intervention will be delivered to the intervention group and then to the control group after a time delay of 15 months post intervention commencement. A baseline survey will be conducted with all consenting educators and field workers (n = ~70) assessing outcomes at the cluster and individual level. The survey will also be administered at one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. The survey consists of questions measuring perceived levels of knowledge, confidence and skills in promoting children's social and emotional wellbeing. As much of this intervention will be delivered by field workers, field worker-family day care educator relationships are key to its success and thus supervisor support will also be measured. All educators will also have an in-home quality of care assessment at baseline, one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. Process evaluation will occur at one month, six months and 12 months post-intervention commencement. Information regarding intervention fidelity and economics will also be assessed in the survey. DISCUSSION: A capacity building intervention in child mental health promotion for family day care is an essential contribution to research, policy and practice. This initiative is the first internationally, and essential in building an evidence base of interventions in this extremely policy-timely setting. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: 343312 BioMed Central 2011-11-03 /pmc/articles/PMC3219588/ /pubmed/22047600 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-842 Text en Copyright ©2011 Davis et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Study Protocol
Davis, Elise
Williamson, Lara
Mackinnon, Andrew
Cook, Kay
Waters, Elizabeth
Herrman, Helen
Sims, Margaret
Mihalopoulos, Cathrine
Harrison, Linda
Marshall, Bernard
Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial
title Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial
title_full Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial
title_fullStr Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial
title_full_unstemmed Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial
title_short Building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial
title_sort building the capacity of family day care educators to promote children's social and emotional wellbeing: an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial
topic Study Protocol
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3219588/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22047600
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-11-842
work_keys_str_mv AT daviselise buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT williamsonlara buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT mackinnonandrew buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT cookkay buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT waterselizabeth buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT herrmanhelen buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT simsmargaret buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT mihalopouloscathrine buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT harrisonlinda buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial
AT marshallbernard buildingthecapacityoffamilydaycareeducatorstopromotechildrenssocialandemotionalwellbeinganexploratoryclusterrandomisedcontrolledtrial