Grant: Project Grant

One in five Canadians care for someone with a disability, and nearly 50% of them are parents of a child with a disability. Many felt their rehabilitation needs were not being met, even before the disruptions to healthcare and education systems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Telehealth, or healthcare services provided through technologies (mostly online), offers therapists an effective means of providing parents with timely information, education, counselling and training to meet their child's needs. Numerous pediatric rehabilitation organizations 'adopted' telehealth in response to the pandemic, but many therapists lacked the appropriate training and voiced a need for support to ensure telehealth practices were effective and led to meaningful results for their patients. This study aims to address this need. Our team has developed a telehealth intervention for parents of children with a disability living in Quebec, for which a training and support program (TIPS) was provided to therapists. The present study is an extension of this work, to implement and assess the impact of TIPS on a broader scale. Twenty centres from across Canada that provide pediatric rehabilitation (physiotherapy, occupational therapy or speech and language pathology) to children with a disability ages 0-12 and their families have committed to participate. The TIPS program will first be adapted to meet the training and support needs of each participating centre and will then be offered to their therapists for one year. Before, during and after the support period, the study will monitor a number of indicators to track how TIPS was implemented and what effect it may have had on the therapists, on the participating centers and on how families perceived their services. This study will provide important insight into how best to support pediatric therapists so that telehealth becomes a sustainable option used by therapists to meet the needs of children with a disability and their families.