Article Text
Abstract
Unintentional injury is the leading cause of death in children 1–19 years of age; rates of injury in children of vulnerable parenting populations (e.g., those with lower socio-economic status, lower levels of education, younger maternal age) are even higher. Thus, intervention programs for parents need to be targeted and tailored for such a population. Currently, no evidence-based programming related to injury prevention is being used by Public Health agencies across Ontario, Canada. The previously validated Supervising for Home Safety intervention program was adapted to fit the needs of a vulnerable parenting population within the context of pre-existing community programming through these Public Health agencies. This process evaluation sought to explore parent acceptability, feasibility of facilitator implementation, and to determine practicality of a PRE/POST questionnaire as a future method to evaluate efficacy of this newly adapted program. Parents provided ratings of the program (e.g., helpfulness, utility, increase in knowledge, would they recommend the program), and facilitators provided ratings and written responses (e.g., preparation, clarity, improvements that could be made). Results suggest that overall both parents and facilitators rated the program positively. Major themes identified by facilitators suggest that the questionnaire should be significantly shortened and simplified to account for low literacy in this population specifically. Additionally, the limits of existing session length for this community programming is a barrier to implementing a thorough questionnaire evaluation. Moving forward, literacy level will be reduced overall, and alternatives to a questionnaire format will be explored. Conducting research within community setting constraints is discussed. This research has identified what remains to be addressed for the purposes of a large scale evaluation of a well-received program. This program has the potential to provide large scale publicly funded parenting programs with evidence based intervention to reduce the rates of unintentional injury in children among vulnerable parenting populations.