Investigators
Amy Finlay-Jones, Wendy Simpson, Jetro Ang, Elissa Strumpher, Jenny Downs, Helen Milroy, Sally Brinkman, Brody Heritage, Desiree Silva, Catherine Elliott
Collaborators
Brad Jongeling, J.D. Smith, Lauren Wakschlag, Debra Singh, Ailsa Munns, Karen Forde, Meredith Green
Project description
Every year, over 80,000 Western Australian children will have a diagnosed mental health disorder. These children are likely to experience serious disruptions to their schooling, friendships, family life and daily activities, with impacts lasting well into adulthood. Childhood mental health problems create undue stress for families and place enormous financial strain on the healthcare system.The benefits of prevention and early intervention for childhood mental health problems are well-documented, yet there is a sizeable evidence-to-practice gap. This study will address this gap by partnering with community service providers to lay the groundwork for a scalable, evidence-based early screening and support system in WA that has the potential for far-reaching public health impact. It will provide crucial data to pioneer a new system of infant and early childhood mental health screening, prevention, and early intervention by testing the implementation feasibility of two key components of an evidence-based screening and support system designed to prevent childhood mental illness in WA children from infancy onward:
Component 1: universal screening to identify children most in need of preventive intervention using the Global Scale of Early Development (GSED); and
Component 2: family support using the Family Check-Up (FCU) a brief, evidence-based program that has been shown to prevent childhood mental health difficulties.
The GSED is an internationally validated measure, designed to monitor infant and child development and track the impact of child development programs and policies. The FCU is supported by robust evidence of effectiveness across settings and populations internationally. This study will be the first time that the GSED and the FCU been trialled in Australia. Our overarching aim is to collect critical data to inform the implementation of these approaches as part of a universal screening and early intervention approach within WA community child health settings.
Our primary research questions are:
- Is the GSED a valid and useful tool for toddler mental health and developmental screening in WA?
- Is the FCU a feasible intervention for delivery in WA community child health?
We will also determine whether it is feasible to run a full-scale randomized controlled trial (RCT) to determine whether FCU is more effective than usual care in WA.
For component 1, we will work with family members and CAHS-CH to determine the appropriateness of the GSED and how it should be used to provide feedback to families about child development. We will also test the GSED with 1500 families recruited via our partner sites: CAHS-CH and the ORIGINS Project.
For component 2, we will train child health workers to deliver the FCU and conduct a pilot RCT to test program feasibility and guide a larger scale trial. Questions about the implementation readiness of FCU in WA will be embedded into the training and trial phases.
Funding
WA Child Research Fund