Grant: Project Grant

In Canada, unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for children 1-19 years, and for those 1 through 4 years of age these injuries occur most frequently in the home, presumably while an adult caregiver is present. Of the various types of safety precautions implemented by parents, watchful supervision has proven to be the single most effective means of preventing childhood injuries. The aim of this research is to increase the accessibility of the only proven effective program that improves watchful supervision (Supervising for Home Safety, SHS) by delivering the program online and conducting a randomized control trial (RCT) to evaluate the impact of this on supervision and child injuries among parents having children 1 through 4 years of age. This research focuses on vulnerable parents (i.e., single, teens, income < $40K) in particular because their children are at particularly high risk for injury and they desire online programming, though there are no evidence-based safety-promotion online programs. A Partially Nested RCT will be conducted wherein the intervention parents participate in groups (clusters), but the control parents do not. Recruitment will take place at the Early Child Learning Centres (ECLC) throughout Toronto. Pre- and post- test and follow-up measures will be taken individually online in both groups, and include indices of watchful supervision and child injuries (all measures have been validated in past studies). Those in the Intervention group will receive the SHS program weekly over 4 weeks (between pre- and post- measures), while Waitlist controls receive no programming. An evidence-based intervention to improve the watchful supervision of vulnerable caregivers is sorely needed as their children are at elevated risk of unintentional injury, yet no such programs currently exist. The proposed research on online delivery of the SHS program addresses this gap and takes into account the accessibility needs of this high-risk population.