Parent-child relationships during parenting programmes: A feasibility pilot study of the Contextualising and Learning in Mental Health Support App

Little is known about how parent-child dynamics change when parents engage in parenting intervention programmes. To explore this, the Contextualising and Learning in Mental Health Support (CALMS) app was developed to capture daily parent-reports of these key family dynamics. This small-scale pilot study aimed to test (a) the feasibility of recruiting parents attending parenting programmes to a study of parent-child dynamics throughout a 10–12-week intervention and (b) adherence to reporting parent and child behaviours in CALMS during this period. Nine parents were recruited to complete CALMS from two parenting groups and three participated in feedback interviews. Recruitment was shown to be feasible, and adherence acceptable. Most parents reported that CALMS was easy to use, not burdensome and increased their awareness of their own and their child’s behaviours. Feasible and acceptable to parents attending parenting intervention, CALMS may have therapeutic benefits that should be explored in future research.

Plain language summary

Little is known about how relationships between parents and children change when parents take part in parenting support programmes. To learn more, a new smartphone app called CALMS was created to allow parents to quickly record how they and their children are behaving each day. The aim of this study was to understand whether parents could be recruited from parenting programmes and how engaged parents would be with completing the CALMS app twice daily during a 10-12-week intervention. The results were positive: nearly two-thirds of parents were recruited to the study and most used the app often. Parents reported that the app was simple to use, did not take much time, and helped them notice more about their own and their child’s behaviour. In summary, the recruitment of parents to the research was achieved, daily engagement was acceptable and the app appeared to have additional benefits to parents which should be explored more in future studies.