Empowering parents through the development of an online evidence-based mental health promotion school engagement resource

Project Information

EMPOWER

Grant agreement ID: 655950

DOI

10.3030/655950

Project terminated on 11 November 2017

EC signature date 8 April 2015

Start date 6 July 2015

End date 3 January 2018

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 165 598,80

EU contribution

€ 165 598,80

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITEIT TWENTE
Netherlands

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EMPOWER (Empowering parents through the development of an online evidence-based mental health promotion school engagement resource)

Reporting period: 2015-07-06 to 2017-07-05

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

There is growing international recognition of the need to promote children’s social and emotional skills as part of their overall health and wellbeing. Children need to have skills such as managing strong emotions, setting and achieving goals, managing conflicts, dealing with change, developing coping strategies, navigating relationships with peers and adults. To build and support these skills, there has been an emphasis within schools on the adoption of social and emotional learning programmes. There is now a substantive body of international evidence that these programmes can lead to long term benefits for children including improved mental health, social functioning, academic performance and positive health behaviours.

It is well established that parents play a significant role in children’s social and emotional learning. Developing social and emotional skills requires a collaboration between the school and home as these are two of the key social contexts within which social and emotional skills are developed. The majority of work on engaging parents in children’s social and emotional development has focused on traditional methods such as face-to-face group-based parenting programmes. Although, a number of these programmes have demonstrated significant improvements for children and parents, there are several issues around engaging parents including psychological barriers such as stigma, lack of confidence, or concern about being judged and practical issues such as transport to, childcare, financial difficulties, inconvenient timing. In addition, the majority of parenting interventions address behavioural problems and conduct disorders as opposed to enhancing children’s competencies. EMPOWER sought to address these issues by developing an online application aimed at enhancing parental engagement in the development of children’s social and emotional competencies. EMPOWER adopted a systematic approach to developing an evidence-based intervention. An online application aimed at supporting parental engagement introduces simplicity, convenience, accessibility and affordability to a largely untapped area of research.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Prior to developing the app, a meta-analysis of interventions that adopt a whole school approach to social and emotional skill development was carried out. As part of this meta-analysis, a detailed review of the parenting components of whole school interventions was carried out. A series of needs assessment interviews took place with key stakeholders including principals, teachers, parents and children from schools in the Netherlands. Results from the needs assessment assisted in refining resource development. The content for the child-parent online application was developed over a twelve month period. The five core competencies for social and emotional skill development as identified by Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning was used as an overarching theoretical framework for content development. The app consists of five modules, each module addressing a specific social or emotional skill.

During the phase of content development, the researcher went on a one month secondment to Harvard Graduate School of Education and collaborated with Prof Stephanie Jones on the development of evidence-based strategies to enhance children’s social and emotional competencies. The researcher also collaborated with the Department of Industrial Design at the University of Twente on the integration of persuasive technology design and gaming techniques to enhance user experience. The CeHRes Framework, which was developed at the University of Twente was used as a guideline to plan, coordinate and execute the participatory development process of the app. A series of participatory workshops and focus groups were carried out with parents (both mothers and fathers) and their children in order to ascertain end-users’ views about the draft content and its potential in supporting parental engagement in children’s learning. The results from this creative design phase was used to refine the content and style of the app so that it performed better at meeting the needs of both parents and children.

The researcher collaborated with a creative designer and software developer on the development of the app. The app was developed to run on both iOS and Android platforms and was developed in both Dutch and English. Usability testing was performed using a Living Lab approach with parents and children from two schools in the Netherlands. Observation methods, thinking aloud and questionnaires were used to collect data related to the apps functionality and user satisfaction including their expectations, frustrations and difficulties. Results were used to further enhance the online application.

The results from the meta-analysis of school-based interventions is currently being written up and will be submitted for publication. In addition, the results from the development and usability testing phase of the app are also being written up for publication. Results from the usability testing indicate the potential of this app in (i) supporting parental engagement in children’s learning (ii) enhancing children’s social and emotional skills and (iii) enhancing parental knowledge on the strategies that can be used to support children’s social and emotional development. This app is designed for children aged 7-8 years. Using the same format, a similar apps can be developed for younger and older children in primary school.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Given that up to 50% of mental disorders in adults begin before that age of 14, the promotion of mental health and wellbeing in children is a priority area for Europe. The research carried out as part of this fellowship, directly aimed to address this priority area. This research adopted a systematic approach to developing an evidence-based app to support parental engagement in children’s social and emotional learning. The engagement of parents and the promotion of parenting skills has been identified in Europe as a key strategy in addressing the needs of children within the education setting. To date very little work has been done in the field of utilising technologies to support parental engagement in children’s mental health. The development of an app for parents to use at home with their children is unique and creates new market opportunities. Whilst there are several curriculum-based social and emotional skills interventions being implemented in schools, there is a dearth of resources available for children to play at home that reinforces what is being learned in school. A unique feature of the app is that it aims to engage both children and parents. Playing fun mini-games together is designed to support positive interactions between parent and child. This app serves as a tool to support skill development, whilst also providing evidence-based information and guidelines for parents about the range of skills that are being developed (in the form of parent tips and strategies). The mini-games in combination with the parent tips and strategies thus have the potential to support the parent-child relationship, enhance children’s skills development and increase parental knowledge of the social and emotional skill that they can reinforce in the home environment.

Image of app