90Second Parent Well-being (PWB)
Children with developmental disabilities and their parents have been disproportionately impacted by the COVID‑19 pandemic. Due to COVID-related shutdowns, many parents did not have access to much needed supports and services and their children’s behavior has regressed. The pandemic has taken its toll on the well-being and mental health of parents of children with developmental disabilities, who are already disproportionately impacted by the demands of caring for their children. Parental well-being is an important predictor of child well-being. Subsequently, there is a need for interventions that foster well-being in parents and that support them in their challenging role. We propose an e-health intervention (available via e-mail and text message) to improve the well-being of parents of children with developmental disabilities by giving parents access to brief, easy to understand, and relevant information and strategies, based on evidence-based scientific findings. The intervention is an online health letter 90Second Parent Well-being addressing the many challenges of parenting a child with developmental disabilities. Each health letter will be developed to address a specific issue relevant to parents. Our aim is to develop and test the effectiveness of the 90Second Parent Well-being. In addition to developing an intervention that is accessible and easy to use, we will develop this intervention to be culturally responsive to diverse populations, as these populations are often underserved by current available programming. We will recruit a sample of 273 parents of children aged 3-14 years with developmental disabilities from across Canada. We will measure psychological well-being (primary outcome), parental resilience, depressive and anxiety symptoms (secondary outcomes), as well as demographic information. T-tests will be used to test the effectiveness of the intervention. If effective, we will work with partners to make it widely available.
