CRE Newsletter - October 2022
Child and Family Hub update
Welcome to the October (Spring) edition of our Centre of Research Excellence (CRE) in Childhood Adversity and Mental Health Newsletter!
What is happening in Wyndham Vale (Vic)?
News update
It has been a busy month at the Wyndham Vale Child and Family Hub!
During September, we commenced data collection as part of the six-month follow-up stage. Families that attended the Child and Family Hub in March were invited to complete an online follow-up survey. To date, 137 families have completed surveys. Early data shows that approximately 80 percent of families have returned to the Hub since their first visit to take up services.
In September, we also welcomed a new Research Assistant, Sydney who has joined the Melbourne team. Sydney is assisting us with six-month follow-up of families and will also play an active role in the upcoming Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles at the Child and Family Hub in Wyndham Vale. This will involve seeking practitioners feedback on their feelings towards specific elements of practice or resources.
Child and Family Hub practitioners continue to attend monthly lunchtime learning collaboratives, facilitated by the Senior Mental Health Clinician, Tony Gates. Each session focuses on a different theme and provides clinicians with an opportunity to discuss challenges and solutions. The September lunchtime learning collaborative focused on reflective practice, and the October session will focus on identifying and responding to family violence.
What's news at the Marrickville (NSW) Child and Family Hub?
In Marrickville, a new Research Coordinator, Linda Mirabilio has been recruited. Linda will be assisting the NSW team with ongoing implementation and evaluation of the Marrickville Child and Family Hub.
Over the last few months, the team have been busy drafting manuscripts, and meeting with local clinicians to seek feedback on a service and referral mapping directory that was developed in partnership with the Inner West City Council. The directory includes a range of services that practitioners may like to refer families to for further support.
In other news, our Health Justice Partnership will see visiting lawyers from our local partner Marrickville Health Centre, operating out of the Child and Family Hub at Marrickville Health Centre, fortnightly from October moving forward.
Scalability and sustainability update...
National Child and Family Hub Network:
o New members have joined the Network from the Commonwealth Department of Health.
o We have received funding from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course ($20,000) to launch the Network in 2023 and hold a national webinar on Hubs.
o We submitted an application to the Ian Potter Foundation to fund the National Child and Family Hubs Network to allow the expansion of this work to include: a national webinar showcasing evidence, policy and practice related to hubs, a National Community of Practice for Hubs to share learning and network, develop a website, and undertake research related to Hubs nationally.
Researchers in Residence:
o Researchers in Residence (RiR) is based on a UK model whereby an experienced researcher is embedded within an organisation for a certain time period. The aim of the RiR is to help an organisation, create and shape systems that actively learn and adapt within a complex environment, creating conditions for an organisation to deliver healthcare improvements that meet the needs of their community.
o We have submitted an expression of interest to the Brian M Davis Charitable Foundation for two RiR positions to be based in 3 Victorian community health services (Sunraysia, DPV and IPC Health Services) to support these health services to co-design, implement and embed local evaluations around a Child and Family Hub.
Advocacy and Communications:
o In August, members of the CRE team presented about the Child and Family Hubs at a planning day for the Queensland Mental Health Commission.
o CRE staff presented about the Hubs work to over 300 people as part of a National Child Protection Week series of events run by NAPCAN (see 'webinars' below for more information).
o The current CRE website is being reviewed with the new website due to be launched in 2023.
Achievements
- Congratulations to Suzy and the team on their new publication: Honisett S, Hall T, Hiscock H, Goldfeld S. The feasibility of a Child and Family Hub within Victorian Community Health Services to better identify and respond to family adversity and prevent mental health problems: a qualitative study. ANZ JPH. 2022. doi:10.1111/1753-6405.13292.
- Congrats Associate Professor Sue Woolfenden (UNSW) who is an Associate Investigator on the CRE. Sue was awarded $917,000 for a project that will assess the effectiveness of Integrated Children's Hubs. It will determine the Hubs effectiveness in increasing access to child and family services for disadvantaged families with young children. Read more here.
- We also would like to congratulate Professor Valsamma Eapen (Chief Investigator on the CRE) at UNSW who was awarded $1,964,142 for this project: Using technological innovations to provide equitable access to early identification of child development needs and integrated health and social care using a blended service delivery framework.
Do Integrated Child and Family Hub models of care improve mental health outcomes for children experiencing adversity?
Congratulations to Suzy Honisett and the team on publishing this paper on 17 June 2022.
In short, this review aims to:
- assess the effectiveness of integrated primary health and social care hubs on mental health outcomes for children; and
- identify elements of integration that can be linked to improvements in child mental health outcomes.
Methods...
PubMed, OVID Medline and PsychINFO databases were systematically searched for relevant articles (records dated between 2006 and 2020). Briefly this included peer reviewed studies within the primary health care setting (which included integrated care) that involved children aged 0-12years experiencing adversity, with assessed mental health outcomes (i.e. depression, anxiety).
In total 5961 references were retrieved. Of these, four studies involving children aged 0 - 12 years experiencing one or more adversities were included. On average, most children were male (60.5%), and Hispanic or African American (82.5%).
Key outcomes of interest...
Three studies with low-moderate risk of bias reported improvements in mental health outcomes for children experiencing adversity receiving integrated care.
The remaining study (the only RCT in this review) did not show significant improvements in mental health but showed a significant interaction effect of time and intervention on parenting skills and a trend toward improvements in parenting quality.
The most common dimensions of effective integrated Hubs based on the Rainbow Model of Integrated Care were:
- clinical integration (including case management, patient-centred care, patient education, and continuity of care)
- professional integration; and
- organisational integration including co-location.
You can read a quick snapshot of the paper via our website here.
Honisett S, Loftus H, Hall T, Sahle B, Hiscock H, Goldfeld S. Do Integrated Hub Models of Care Improve Mental Health Outcomes for Children Experiencing Adversity? A Systematic Review. International Journal of Integrated Care. 2022;22:24. https://www.ijic.org/articles/10.5334/ijic.6425/
Webinars!
Creating a 'one-stop shop' for the needs of families: Co-design, evaluation & sustaining change
Until now there has been limited research and evaluation about how best to design and create hubs to meet the needs of families. As part of National Child Protection Week that was held from 5-9 September, 2022, the CRE team shared learnings from our co-design process, evaluation, and evidence, including:
- What families are telling us they need.
- What are the core elements of the ideal hub.
- How ‘social prescribing’ needs to sit alongside medical prescribing.
- How existing hubs and health centres can start to shift towards a more integrated model.
This webinar was facilitated by NAPCAN. You can access the webinar recording here. More presentations from National Child Protection Week can also be found here.
Meet our team
Introducing Alicia Montgomery
Tell us about yourself?
My name is Alicia and I am a community and developmental paediatrician working in the Sydney Local Health District. My role involves supervising our non-clinical community paediatric research team, in addition to working with the families of children and young people with developmental differences. Our team is involved in a large range of research project that span integrated care, epidemiology, and clinical research projects. Ultimately, we aim to provide innovative care to deliver the best health, social, wellbeing and developmental outcomes for those we support.
What is something people don't know about you?
I used to run a vintage china hire business as a side hussle! I closed the business when I moved overseas a few years ago, but still have an enormous stockpile of crockery up in the attic.
What do you hope the CRE will achieve?
Locally in Marrickville, I hope that the CRE project will enable our Hub clinicians to support families facing life challenges with greater confidence, and for health providers to have stronger links with other interagency stakeholders in the community.
What are you currently working on in the Centre?
We are currently getting ready to welcome laywers from the Marrickville Legal Centre into the hub in the Marrickville Community Health Centre, where they will be providing assistance to clients and providing legal education to health staff.
What inspires your work?
I find the resilience of the families we work with inspiring, in addition to celebrating their strengths and their ‘wins,’ as they work to overcome challenges over time.
Find out more about Alicia here!
Recent publications
1. Honisett S, Hall T, Hiscock H, Goldfeld S. The feasibility of a Child and Family Hub within Victorian Community Health Services to better identify and respond to family adversity and prevent mental health problems: a qualitative study. ANZ J PH. 2022. doi: 10.1111/1753-6405.13292.
2. Lawrence J, Walpola R, Boyce SL, Bryant PA, Sharma A, Hiscock H. Home Care for Bronchiolitis: a Systematic Review. Pediatrics. 2022 Sep 6.
3. Hiscock H, Chu W, O’Reilly G, Freed GL, White M, Danchin M, Craig S. Association between COVID-19 restrictions and emergency department presentations for paediatric mental health in Victoria, Australia. Australian Health Review. 2022 Jul 5
4. Hall T, Goldfeld S, Loftus H, Honisett S, Liu HM, De Souza D, Bailey C, Reupert A. Yap M, Eapen V, Haslam R, Sanci L, Fisher J, Eastwood J, Mukumbang F, Jones R, Constable L, Forell S, Morris Z, Montgomery A, Pringle G, Dalziel K, Hiscock H. Integrated Child and Family Hub models for detecting and responding to family adversity: protocol for a mixed-methods evaluation in two sites. BMJ Open 2022 May 24;12(5):e055431. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-055431 PMID: 35613800 (IF: 2.69)
5. Berger, E., Reupert, A., Allen, K-A., & Campbell, T. (in press). A systematic review of the long-term benefits of school mental health interventions for students in Australia. Frontiers Education. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2022.986391
6. Chen, L., Reupert, A., & Vivekananda, K. (in press). Parenting and family life experiences of Chinese fathers with mental illness. Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing.
7. Patrick, P., Berger, E., McLean, L., & Reupert, A. (in press). Developing a support program for adult children of parents with mental illness: A Delphi study. Community Mental Health Journal.
8. Savaglio, M., Yap, M. B. H., O'Donnell, R., & Skouteris, H. (2022, in press). Targeted Community-Based Programs for Children’s Mental Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Australian Literature. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. Accepted 17/8/22.
For a full list of publications, please visit our website!
