Investigators
Amy Finlay-Jones, Jetro Ang
Collaborators
Francoise Butel, Erica Hines, Con Papadopoulos, Tamasin Meller, Gehan Roberts, Andrew Smith, Brad Jongeling, Katy Burley, Helen (Honey) Heussler, Caitlin Black, Adele Kelly, Lesley Pereira
Partners
Child Development Service, Centre for Child Community Health, Child and Adolescent Health Service, WA Country Health Services, Child Development Program, Children's Healthcare Australasia
Project description
Listening to children and families about what is important to them when visiting Child Development Services (CDS) can provide valuable insights. These insights can inform the way we deliver, evaluate and improve health services. One method of understanding if Child Development Services are meeting the needs of children, families and health service providers is to ask “what matters to you?”, to determine whether children and their families are experiencing the outcomes perceived to be most important to them.
This information will be used to help generate a patient-reported outcome measure (PROM) tool. A PROM tool is a questionnaire that can be completed by families to rate the outcomes for their child and family, and in doing so, also rate the quality-of-service delivery provided by their Child Development Service.
PROM tools are increasingly being used internationally in many different healthcare settings to give patients and families a way to communicate what the outcomes of their medical care are, and what that means to them. Unfortunately, to date, there are no PROMs designed for parents and carers of children with developmental concerns. With your help we want to change that.
We are recruiting parents and carers of children aged 6 years and younger, to be involved in one of two focus group sessions at each hospital/health service site (Children’s Health Queensland Hospital and Health Services, Royal North Shore Hospital, The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne, Perth Children’s Hospital and Western Australian Country Health Service, Child Development Service Southport). We will conduct online meetings where participants along with others parents and carers of children with developmental concerns, will give us an insight into what matters to you.
This project forms part of a larger body of work to support Child Development Services around Australia and New Zealand to collect and share data on outcomes of care. Since Early 2020, Children’s Healthcare Australasia have been working with Child Development Services to develop a benchmarking program to understand similarities and differences, changes over time and whether outcomes for children are improving. Children’s Healthcare Australasia (CHA) is a not-for-profit organisation that represents approximately 130 paediatric services across Australia and New Zealand, including all of the Children’s Hospitals as well as paediatric units within General Hospitals, large and small.
Funding
This project is jointly funded by the parties.