Peer-reviewed article
A Qualitative Evaluation of Caregivers' Perceptions of a New Australian Public Mental Health Service (Nurturing Connections).
Cibralic S, Myat P, Barker L, Fay-Stammbach T, Landry A et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This qualitative study evaluated how caregivers experienced a new Australian mental health service called Nurturing Connections, which serves families where caregivers have mental illness. The program targets caregivers of young children and aims to improve both caregiver mental health and child development. Twelve caregivers were interviewed about their experiences, with findings showing benefits, facilitators, and areas for improvement in the service.
Key points
- The program addresses gaps in perinatal and early childhood mental health services by treating both parental mental health and child needs, rather than parents alone
- Four main themes emerged: motivation for attending, program components received, post-program outcomes (caregiver, child, and interpersonal), and areas for improvement
- Study identified program benefits and facilitators for caregivers and their children
- The Nurturing Connections Program was implemented across three local health districts in New South Wales
- Children of caregivers with mental illness face increased risk of mental, physical, and relational challenges
Limitations
This is a small qualitative study with 12 caregiver participants and no comparison group, so findings cannot be generalised to all users of the service or other populations. The study captures caregivers' perceptions but does not measure objective outcomes for children or use independent assessment of change.
Abstract
Children whose primary caregivers experience mental illness and adverse psychosocial complexity are at increased risk of experiencing mental, physical, and relational challenges. Perinatal mental health services have commonly focused on treating the parental mental health problem; however, emerging evidence shows that parental mental health interventions alone are not sufficient to address the complex needs of both caregivers and their children. To address this gap in services, a new, highly specialised program-the Nurturing Connections Program-was implemented across three Australian local health districts within the State of New South Wales. The program is targeted to caregivers of young children referred to mental health services and aims to improve caregiver mental health and psychosocial adversity, child developmental outcomes, and the child-caregiver relationship. This study evaluated caregivers' experiences with, and views of, the program. Twelve caregivers participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. A reflexive thematic analysis approach guided data interpretation. Four themes and three subthemes emerged from the data: (1) motivation for attending the program; (2) program components received; (3) post-program outcomes (subthemes: Caregiver-related outcomes, Child-related outcomes, and interpersonal outcomes); and (4) areas for program improvement. This study's findings highlight program benefits, program facilitators and areas for improvement.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Nurturing Connections Program: a specialised public mental health service targeting caregivers of young children referred to mental health services, aiming to improve caregiver mental health and psychosocial adversity, child developmental outcomes, and the child-caregiver relationship
- Population
- Caregivers of young children referred to mental health services across three Australian local health districts in New South Wales
Key finding
Four main themes emerged: motivation for attending the program, program components received, post-program outcomes (with subthemes of caregiver-related outcomes, child-related outcomes, and interpersonal outcomes), and areas for program improvement