Grant: Project Grant

Parenting typically-developing children is one of our most challenging roles; parenting children with developmental disabilities is known to take a considerable toll on parents' physical and mental health and wellbeing. It is obvious that promoting parent wellbeing is important for the best outcomes for all children, especially those facing life-long challenges. To date we have little understanding, and no direct evidence, about whether it is possible to prevent the physical and mental health impacts on parents when they have a child with an impairment, which in turn will benefit their children. In the 21st century there have been some significant advances in how we think about 'health' and about 'family-centred services'. As a result, we are changing the ways we try to work with families to help them manage developmental disabilities. These ideas have been developed and 'packaged' - by a team of health services researchers and parents - into a set of 5 weekly workshops for parents newly on their journey as parents of children with long-term developmental disabilities. The time is ripe for a major exploration of the impact of these workshops - collectively referred to as ENVISAGE (ENabling VISions And Growing Expectations) - on a host of parent-reported outcomes. These outcomes include measures of parents' sense of competence as parents, their mental health, their perceptions of the family-centredness of the services they receive, and how empowered they feel. Outcomes will be assessed before the workshops, at the end of the 5 weekly sessions, and at 3, 6 and 12 months after the ENVISAGE program. We expect that this program will have an important short-term effect on parent outcomes, and provide powerful evidence for a large-scale randomized trial that will then include measures of children's outcomes as well as parent wellbeing. If the program is demonstrated to 'work' over a 2-year period it can be further developed and made available across the world.