Targeting Child Mental Health and Household Poverty

Summary

Living in poverty has long-lasting negative effects on children's mental health and on their mental health in adulthood. Child poverty is very common, affecting 17% of Canadian children. Many low income families may not be getting all the social benefits they are entitled to receive. Increasingly, there are calls for primary care providers to ask all patients about poverty and to intervene if poverty is identified. However, it is not known if an intervention can improve children's health. This study will test the effect of having a Community Support Worker work with families of children age 2-5 years during a primary care visit to identify unmet financially related social needs (like food, housing or energy insecurity) and help families navigate the social service system. The Community Support Worker will help families complete income tax, apply for benefits and community supports to which they are entitled. The investigators will study the effect on child emotional and behavioural health, parent stress and depression and family income. Results from this study will help health care providers and policy makers understand whether this is an effective way to integrate the health and social service systems to improve child and parent health.

Conditions

• Poverty
• Child Health
• Behavior Problem

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Community Support Worker

Participants in the intervention group will have a structured review of their financially related needs and resources with a trained CSW, who will have a thorough understanding of potential income supports and community support agencies. The CSW will use a structured approach to identify financial needs and benefits for which the family is eligible The CSW will work intensively with families in the intervention arm to identify and meet their goals. They will conduct weekly meetings to complete forms, and provide advocacy (in person and by telephone) as needed up to six meetings as needed for system navigation.

BEHAVIORAL

Control

There is no clear standard of care and potential for practice variation in clinician responses to identified social need. For this proposal, participants in the comparator group will receive Usual care, defined as: Participants in both groups will receive a written summary of available resources.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• The Hospital for Sick Children

  collaborator OTHER

• Imaan Bayoumi

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Imaan Bayoumi, MD, MSc · Queen's University

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

2 Years

Max Age

5 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2019-04-18

Primary Completion

2022-03-30

Completion

2024-07-31

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations