Tele-Wellness Supported App for Family Child Care Home Providers and Families to Promote Health, Family Engagement, and School Readiness Amid COVID-19

Stress, Psychological Clinical Trial

Official title:

Adapting and Delivering a Tele-Wellness Supported Digital Toolkit to Baltimore City's Approved Family Child Care Home Providers Caring for Children of Essential Workers: Promoting Health, Early Literacy, and Quality Parent Engagement Amid COVID-19: A Pilot Study

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Enrolling by invitation

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT04453657
• Other study ID #: IRB00250864
• Status: Enrolling by invitation
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: February 4, 2021
• Est. completion date: September 2025

Study information

• Verified date: September 2023
• Source: Johns Hopkins University
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The investigators aim to deliver a tele-wellness supported app to Baltimore City's Family Child Care Home (FCCH) providers who are caring for children of Essential Personnel. Once a pre-survey is conducted, login information will be assigned to 30 Family Child Care Home providers and parents the FCCH serve. Providers and Parents will receive self-care and parenting/parent engagement support through the app and through a tele-wellness service, Ask a Nurse, provided by community health nurses at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Children will have access to gamified learning materials in early literacy, math, social-emotional learning, and nutrition.

Description:

The investigators will adapt and deliver a tele-wellness supported digital toolkit via an app for Baltimore City's Family Child Care Home (FCCH) providers and the families the FCCH serve. Through this digital toolkit, the investigators aim to provide related self-care support, parent/parent engagement support for both Family Child Care Home providers and parents, and provide access to early literacy, math, social-emotional learning, and nutrition games for children (3-6 years old). Additionally, Family Child Care Home providers and parents will have access to a hotline and email to the Ask a Nurse program-a tele-wellness program run by community registered nurses at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. Through Ask a Nurse, providers and parents will be able to receive wellness counseling from licensed registered nurses and care coordination to address specific social needs. The tele-wellness service is NOT intended to directly address health issues, diagnose, or prescribe. In summary, Family Child Care Home providers will have access to self-care and parent engagement resources and parents will have access to self-care and parenting resources in addition to the games for the child(ren).

The first phase of this study is to tailor an existing app, Escribo Play that already has gamified early literacy and math tools, and expand its scope by including self-care and parenting/parent engagement support for Family Child Care Home Providers and the parents the FCCH serve. Additionally, the investigators are creating gamified social-emotional learning and nutrition games for the children.

The second phase is a pre-post test where the investigator will recruit FCCH providers enrolled in the Essential Personnel Child Care or School-Aged program and the parents the FCCH serve to fill out health surveys before and 15 weeks post engagement with the app.

The investigators hypothesize that engagement with the digital toolkit will improve provider and parental perceived level of stress, informational support, access to learning games, as well as social, emotional, and behavioral functioning in children.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Enrolling by invitation
• Enrollment: 270
• Est. completion date: September 2025
• Est. primary completion date: September 2024
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 3 Years to 99 Years

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Licensed Family Child Care Home Providers operating in Baltimore City who are approved or was once approved to remain open during COVID-19 through the Essential Personnel Child Care or School-Aged Program.

• Parents or legal adult guardians of young children (3-6 years old) who have utilized or continue to utilize the services of Family Child Care Home providers enrolled in the study.

• All participants must have access to a smartphone, tablet, or computer.

Exclusion Criteria:

• Licensed Family Child Care Home Providers not enrolled or was never enrolled in the Essential Personnel Child Care or School-Aged Program

• Parents of young children (3-6 years old) who have not utilized the services of Licensed Family Child Care Home Providers in the Essential Personnel Child Care or School-Aged Program

• FCCH providers not operating in Baltimore City

• FCCH providers who do not have at least 1 parent consenting to participate in the study.

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Child Behavior
• Social Competence
• Stress, Psychological

Intervention

Device:
• FamilyChildCare (provisional name of app)
Parents will provide their child(ren) access to a smartphone, tablet, or computer for approximately 30 minutes, three times per week for 15 weeks with a total dosage of instruction of about 22.5 hours. Parents and providers will receive self-care, parenting, and parent engagement tips and resources through push notifications twice a day. Additionally, daily reminders will be sent to parents through push notification to give their child(ren) access to the learning games. After 15 weeks of app engagement, the providers and parents will be contacted by the PI to notify them of the 15 week time mark and provide the information for post-surveys via Qualtrics.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United States	Johns Hopkins School of Nursing	Baltimore	Maryland

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Johns Hopkins University

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United States, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Change in Perceived Level of Stress as assessed by the Perceived Stress Scale	Family Child Care Home Providers & Parents: Perceived Stress Scale (PSS)-10 is a 10-item tool widely used to measure the degree to which circumstances in one's life are deemed as stressful in the general population. The PSS was designed for use in community samples with at least a junior high school education. The items are easy to understand, and the response alternatives are simple to grasp. Six items of the PSS-10 are negatively phrased (item 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 10; negative perception subscale, while the remaining four (item 4, 5, 7 and 8; positive perception subscale) are positively phrased items and require reverse coding. Total PSS-10 score will be calculated by summing scores. A total score ranges 0-40 where a higher score indicates higher perceived stress.	At pre and post surveys lasting 30-45 minutes each, up to 15 weeks apart
Primary	Change in Perceived Level of Informational Support as assessed by the PROMIS Informational Support Short Form	Family Child Care Home Providers & Parents: Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) Informational Support Short Form 8a assesses the perceived availability of helpful information or advice. It is an 8-item tool and each item has 5 response options ranging in values from one to five-1=Never 2=Rarely 3=Sometimes 4=Usually 5=Always with a range of 8-40. Total raw scores, sum of values to responses, will be calculated. A Score conversion table found in the Appendix of the tool will be used to translate the total raw score or pro-rated score into a T-score for each participant. The T-score rescales the raw score into a standardized score with a mean of 50 and a standard deviation (SD) of 10.	At pre and post surveys lasting 30-45 minutes each, up to 15 weeks apart
Primary	Change in Awareness of the Maryland Early Childhood Family Engagement Framework and Toolkit as assessed by a survey question	Family Child Care Home providers will be asked in the pre/post-surveys whether they are aware of the existence of the Maryland Early Childhood Family Engagement Framework and Toolkit- a 91-page document developed by the Maryland State Department of Education to guide child care providers in best practices for family engagement. Family Child Care Home providers will respond either; i. Yes, I am aware of it but have not read it ii. Yes, I am aware of it and have read the report iii. No, I am not aware of it	At pre and post surveys lasting 30-45 minutes each, up to 15 weeks apart
Primary	Change in Social, Emotional, and Behavior Functioning in Children as assessed by the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation for Children	The social, emotional, and behavioral functioning in children will be assessed by parents responding to items on the Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation for Children: The Short Form (SCBE)-30. It is a 30 item tool with a 6 point response option- Never (1), Sometimes (2 or 3), Often (4 or 5), or Always (6). The SCBE-30 has three subscales (10 items each): Anger-Aggression (cronbach's a = 0.93 in the current sample), Anxiety-Withdrawal (cronbach's a = 0.87), and Social Competence (cronbach's a = 0.89). The SCBE-30 was developed for children from ages three to six and has been shown to have high interrater and test-retest reliability and internal consistency. Sums of each subscale will be calculated.	At pre and post surveys lasting 30-45 minutes each, up to 15 weeks apart
Secondary	Change in Quality of the Parent-Child Care Relationship as assessed by the Supportive Parent-Caregiver Relationship Subscale	Family Child Care Home Provider and Parents: The Supportive Parent-Caregiver Relationship Sub-scale from Scales Measuring Aspects of Child-Care Quality Supportive Parent-Caregiver Relationship assess the perceived quality of the Parent-Child Care Relationship. The provider report contains 6 items with a 5 point response scale-1=Never, 2=Rarely, 3=Sometimes, 4=Often, or 5=Always. The scale will be adapted to ask about the general relationship to all parents, not any specific parent. The parent report contains 6 items with a 5 point response scale-1=Never, 2=Rarely, 3=Sometimes, 4=Often, or 5=Always. The mean score & alpha will be reported. Reported Mean=26.9, SD=3.4, Alpha=.84)	At pre and post surveys lasting 30-45 minutes each, up to 15 weeks apart