Stepped-Care Online Parent Training following Congenital Heart Disease: A Randomized Control Trial

Babies born with serious medical conditions experience physical, learning, emotional, and behavioural challenges across their development. Despite the established importance of families in improving these outcomes, studies evaluating how mental health programs can improve parenting and child behaviour following serious congenital medical conditions remain lacking. We engaged parent partners to better understand mental health care needs in this population. We learned of the tremendous lack of programs helping parents address these challenges. Parents voiced strong interest in learning parenting skills to promote their child's behavioural and emotional development. An essential lesson learned during COVID-19 was that families need support options that are flexible and provided in steps that are matched to their needs (stepped-care). The current study will evaluate a virtual mental health parenting stepped-care intervention (I-InTERACT-North), a SickKids clinical research program with an emerging record of success prior to and during COVID-19. The fundamental goal of the current proposal is to determine if the I-InTERACT-North program works to improve positive parenting skills and child behaviour among families with children born with Congenital Heart Disease (CHD). We will also evaluate the acceptability and feasibility of the program among children and families to inform future delivery and multi-site trials. Currently, there is no evidence-based family treatment for children with early serious medical conditions, such as CHD and parents are eager for ways to enhance their child's well-being. Results will evaluate whether I-InTERACT-North can improve parenting and child behaviour in these families and inform future best clinical practices for this population.