Scalability and sustainability update

Led by Professor Sharon Goldfeld, Scalability and Sustainability (also known as Theme C of the CRE) aims to develop a knowledge translation framework that specifically focuses on taking the learnings from 'Reviewing the Evidence' and purposefully and iteratively considers how they can be translated into practice in the programs (i.e Child and Family Hubs) to promote their best uptake. 

Recently, contributions were made to government submissions as part of broader Centre for Community Child Health (CCCH) to the following for ongoing support to development, implementation and evaluation of Child and Family Hubs:

• The federal pre-budget submission
• Primary Health Care 10-year plan submission

Theme C Advisory Group, including researchers, community health services and policy makers gathered for two planning sessions in late 2021 to plan for the Knowledge Translation strategy of the CRE, including future work to scale and sustain Child and Family Hubs. The outcomes of these planning sessions are currently being refined and will be available to all CRE partners in the coming month.

To learn more about our efforts towards scalability and sustainability, visit our webpage.

Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences in Children: A Systematic Review 

Congratulations to Sarah Loveday and the team on their recent publication.

On our website, you can view a short video abstract which provides an excellent summary of this systematic review.

Briefly, this study aimed to systematically review whether screening for ACEs in children leads to an increase in:

• identification of ACEs;
• referrals to services;
• increased uptake of services; and
• improved mental health outcomes for children and parents

Screening:

In total, 5816 articles were screened by title and abstract. Of these:

• 45 articles were identified for full text review.
• 4 articles were included in analysis (3 articles met inclusion criteria and an additional article was identified through hand searching references).

Results:

• Screening for ACEs increases identification of adversity.
• Screening may increase referrals to services but there is limited data about whether this leads to an increase in referral uptake by families.
• There are no reported data addressing mental health outcomes for children or parents.
• There are no reported data addressing potential harm of ACEs screening.

In summary, there is limited evidence of moderate quality, all arising from the USA, that screening for ACEs improves identification of childhood adversity and may improve referrals to community services. However, there are no reported data supporting improvements in mental health outcomes for children or parents.

Click here to read more about this study on our website.

Awards and Achievements

• We have reached 240 subscribers to our newsletter !!
• Congratulations to Jason Cooper (Research Assistant, CRE) on this publication: Barriers and Facilitators to the Implementation of Parenting Programs in Real-World Settings: A Qualitative Systematic Review  in the Journal of Mental Health and Prevention.
• Professor Harriet Hiscock is presenting at the Alliance for the Prevention of Mental Health Disorders (APMD) on 23 March 2022, followed by three CRE staff who are presenting at the Society for Mental Health Research conference in Hobart. We look forward to sharing an update on these presentations in the next newsletter edition
• Tess is also presenting at the upcoming Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) Conference in June. Co-designing an integrated Child and Family Hub for families experiencing adversity.

Funding / grants

• Additional partnership funding ($150,000) was received for the development, implementation, and evaluation of the Child and Family eHub through Department of Families, Fairness and Housing. The primary aim of the eHub is to improve access and utilisation of existing primary health, mental health, and social services and secondary aim to improve mental health outcomes through adequate and responsive service exposure.
• 2022-2025.  Reupert, A., Foster, K., Hine, R., Kraska, J., Patlamazoglou, L., Lea, S. & Freeman, N.  Evaluation of Satellite Foundation's programs and activities. The Satellite Foundation and the Department of Health: AUD872,727.00
•  2021-2022.  Berger, E., Reupert, A., & Stewart, S.  School Children and Families; Mental Health Wellbeing Program. Rural Aid.  AUD133,358.50
• 2021-2022.  Cuff, R., Hine, R., Reupert, A., Foster, K., Gladstone, B., Yates, S. & McGaw, V. E. StigmaBeat: A co-production project to 

  develop a digital resource to reduce stigma and discrimination. Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal AUD10,000.

Recent publications

1.    Loveday S, Hall T, Constable L, Paton K, Sanci L, Goldfeld S, Hiscock H. Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences in Children: a systematic review. Pediatrics. doi: 10.1542/peds.2021-051884. PMID: 35104358.

2.    Jason Cooper, Jacinta Dermentzis, Hayley Loftus, Berhe W. Sahle, Nicola Reavley, Anthony Jorm, Barriers and facilitators to the implementation of parenting programs in real-world settings: A qualitative systematic review, Mental Health & Prevention, Volume 26, 2022, 200236, ISSN 2212-6570,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mhp.2022.200236.

3.    Goldfeld S, O'Connor E, Sung V, Roberts G, Wake M, West S, Hiscock H. A narrative review of the potential indirect impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on children using a community child health lens. Medical Journal of Australia. doi: 10.5694/mja2.51368. PMID: 35066868.

4.    O'Connor M, Arnup S, Mensah F, Olsson C, Goldfeld S, Viner R, Hope S. Natural history of mental health competence from childhood to adolescence. Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. doi: 10.1136/jech-2021-216761. PMID: 34400516.

5.    Burley, J, Price A, Parker A, Samar N, Zhu A, Eapen V,Contreras-Suarez D, Schreurs N, Lawson K, Lingham R, Grace R, Raman S, Kemp L, Chota S, Goldfeld S, Woolfendend S. Connecting healthcare with income maximisation services and their financial, health and well-being impacts for families with young children: a systematic review protocol. BMJ Open. 2021;11:e056297. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2021-056297. PMID: 34907075 (HWF)

6.      Sexton E, Sheehan J, Van Dam NT, Grobler A, Phillips L, Yaari M, Hiscock H. Feasibility of the Early Minds program by Smiling Mind: Pilot cluster randomised-controlled trial. Mindfullness 2022 doi: 10.1007/s12671-021-01804-4 PMID; 35104358 (Smiling Mind)

7.      Salvaris, Chloe A., Wade, Catherine, Galea, Samantha, Yap, Marie B. H.†, & Lawrence, Katherine A.† (2022). Children’s Perspectives of an Enhanced Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment for Child–Parent Dyads with Anxiety Disorders. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice. Accepted 17th February 2022.

8.      Havighurst, S.S., Chainey, C., Doyle, F.L., Higgins, D.J., Mathews, B., Mazzucchelli, T.G., Zimmer-Gembeck, M. Andriessen, K., Cobham, V.E., Cross, D., Dadds, M.R., Dawe, S., Gray, K.M., Guastella, A.J., Harnett, P., Haslam, D.M., Middeldorp, C.M., Morawska, A., Ohan, J.L., Sanders, M.R., Stallman, H.M., Tonge, B.J., Toumbourou, J.W.,  Turner, K.M.T., Williams, K.E., Yap, M.B.H., & Nicholson, J.M. (2022). A Review of Australian Government Funding of Parenting Intervention Research. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Public Health. Accepted 13th February 2022.

9.      Sim, W. H., Jorm, A.F, & Yap, M. B. H. (2022). The Role of Parent Engagement in a Web-based Preventive Parenting Intervention for Child Mental Health in Predicting Parenting, Parent and Child Outcomes. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Accepted 10th February 2022.

10.      Whittle, S., Pozzi, E., Rakesh, D., Kim, J. M., Yap, M. B. H., Schwartz, O. S., Youssef, G., Allen, N. B. & Vijayakumar, N. (2022). Harsh and inconsistent parental discipline is associated with altered cortical development in children. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging. (Accepted 5th February 2022).

11.   Salvaris, C., Galea, S., Yap, M. B. H.†, & Lawrence, K. A.† (2022). Enhanced Cognitive-Behavioral Treatment for Anxiety Disorders in Children of Clinically-Anxious Parents: Two Case Studies. Clinical Case Studies. (Accepted 21st January 2022).

12.   Laser, C., Modaressi, A., Skogøy, B.E., Reupert, A., Daubmann, A., Höller, A., Zapf, A., Pawils, S., Taubner, S., Winter, S., Maybery, D., & Wiegand-Grefe, S. (in press).  Clinical implementation and evaluation of three implementation interventions for a family-oriented care for children of mentally ill parents (ci-CHIMPS): study protocol for a randomized controlled multicenter trial. Frontiers in Psychiatry

13.   Keary, A., Reupert, A., Kaukko, M. & Wilkinson, J. (in press). Education and an ethics of care when working with refugee families during COVID-19. Early Years: An International Research Journal.  https://doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2022.2031120 

14.   Chen, L., Vivekananda, K., Guan, L., & Reupert, A. (in press). Parenting experiences of Chinese mothers living with a mental illness.  BMC Psychiatry. 

15.    Sheen, J., Aridas, A., Tchernegovski, P., Dudley, A., McGillivary, J, & Reupert, A. (in press).  Investigating the impact of isolation during COVID-19 on family functioning-an Australian snapshot.  Frontiers in Psychology.

16.    Reupert, A., Bee., Hosman, van Doesum, Drost, Falkov…Ruud, T. (2022).  Prato Research Collaborative for Change in Parent and Child Mental Health: Principles and recommendations for working with children and parents living with parental mental illness.  Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 63(3), 350-353.

17.   Maybery, D., Reupert, A., (in press).  Mental health service engagement with family and carers: What practices are fundamental?  BMC Health Services Research. 

18.   Goodyear, M., Allchin, B., Burn, M., von Doussa, H., Reupert, A., Tchernegovski, P., Sheen, J., Cuff, R., Obradovic, A., Solantaus, T., & Maybery, D. (in press).  Promoting self-determination in parents with mental illness in adult mental health settings.  Journal of Family Nursing.  

19.   Peyton D, Goods M, Hiscock H. Can digital health improve parents’ mental health literacy or help-seeking? A systematic review. Journal of Medical Internet Research 2022 2022;24(2):e28771 doi: 10.2196/28771 PMID: 35142623

20.   O’Loughlin R, Hiscock H, Pan T, Devlin N, Dalziel K. The relationship between physical and mental health multimorbidity and children’s health-related quality of life. Quality of Life Research 2022 Jan 29 doi: 10.1007/s11136-022-03095-1 PMID: 35094215 [Online ahead of print]  (IF 4.147)

21.   McKlean K, Hiscock H, Goldfeld S. Timeliness and extent of health service use by Victorian (Australian) children within first year after entry to out-of-home care: retrospective data linkage cohort study. Children and Youth Services, March 2022;134, doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2021.106359

22.   Paton K, Gillam L, Warren H, Mulraney M, Coghill D, Efron D, Sawyer M, Hiscock H. How can the education sector support children’s mental health? Views of Australian healthcare clinicians. PLos one 2022 Jan 24;17(1):e0261827. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0261827 PMID:35073336 eCollection 2022 (MHS). 

For a full list of publications, please visit our website!

Webinars & media

• Thriving Communities Webinar presentation on Integrating Care to improve child mental health and adversity, including Dr Suzy Honisett, Jayne Nelson, CEO IPC Health and Prof. Frank Oberklaid. This webinar explored how Child and Family Hubs are integrating health and social care to improve mental health in families experiencing adversity. 784 participants registered, with over 300 attending on the day. 99% of participants rated the quality of the content of the webinar as high-very high, while 86% found the webinar very useful-extremely useful. Identified as the most valuable component of the webinar - Bringing the research together with practical examples. You can check out this recorded webinar via our website (see knowledge translation webinars).

• Check out Harriet's recent discussion with the ABC network about the increased demand for youth mental health services and the importance of early treatment during this challenging time: https://www.abc.net.au/7.30/rural-families-calling-out-for-more-mental-health/13767800

What is something people don't know about you? 

In Year 10, I went on a school study tour to Italy for three weeks. It was an amazing experience, touring Italy with school friends, practising my language skills, and importantly learning more about the rich Italian history and culture. Towards the end of the tour, I was fortunate to stay with a lovely host family in the small town of ‘Casale Monferrato’ where I attended high school with my host sister each day.

I really immersed myself into the Italian culture. My host mother was a fantastic cook and ensured I was well looked after, always loading up my plate! 

At the end of my trip, I came to realise that I had gained 5kgs in 3 weeks (or perhaps just in the last week)!

I have many treasured memories of this trip and I still keep in touch with my host sister to this day.

What do you hope the CRE will achieve? 

Through a positive approach, I hope the CRE can raise awareness of supports available via the Child and Family Hubs, and increase accessibility to resources for families who are experiencing life challenges. 

What are you currently working on in the Centre?

At present, I am assisting with the development of resources for Hub practitioners, along with my day-to-day duties involving coordination of meetings (including our Annual Investigator and Partner meeting held recently), managing communications, and providing administrative and/or research support to colleagues.

What inspires your work? 

My children (and my supportive husband too). I am very grateful for them and their happiness is of utmost importance to me. I believe every child has the right to feel safe, loved and experience a happy childhood. I hope the CRE can make a positive contribution towards achieving this by preventing and reducing family adversity.

Find out more about Jacinta here!