Supporting Parents and Kids through Lockdown Experiences (SPARKLE)

Co-SPACE, a UKRI-funded nationwide study of families' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, found a significant increase in children's behaviour problems (Cohen's d = .21; p < .001) over the first months of lockdown. Additionally, 70% of respondents asked for extra parenting support. This confirms concerns of an upcoming surge in behavioural challenges in schools and increased parental help-seeking from already overstretched children's services, as lockdown restrictions ease off and families readjust to the 'new normal'. Supporting Parents and Kids through Lockdown Experiences (SPARKLE) is a rapid deployment randomised controlled trial evaluating whether an intervention in the form of a digital public health parenting intervention - Families Under Pressure plus (FuP+) - can reverse these negative effects. FuP+ includes eight animations covering universal evidence-based parenting messages designed to be delivered at scale in an engaging way by celebrity parents. FuP+ animations will be accessed via a mobile application, which will supplement and contextualise the messages to provide easily accessible practical parenting resource. Embedding SPARKLE in Co-SPACE, with pre- and post-intervention measures extracted from routinely, monthly, collected data, will ensure rapid implementation. 616 Co-SPACE participants will be automatically randomised to either FuP+ or follow-up as usual (FAU). This will give statistical power to test whether FuP+ can reverse the negative effects of lockdown by producing a positive effect on behaviour equal in size and opposite to lockdown's negative effect. If results are positive, FuP+ will be disseminated rapidly through collaboration with Public Health England and Department for Education, in cooperation with commercial media partners.