Title: The Research, Development and Useability Testing of an Alpha Prototype of the ‘Headway’ Digital Device Facilitating Family-based Self-help for the Mental Health of Children and Young People.
Funder: Department of Health and Social Care

Abstract: Early intervention can enable recovery from mental ill-health in children and young people (CYP). However, currently 374,000 mentally unwell children are on long waiting lists for specialist treatment, and a further approximately 2 million children don t yet meet the threshold to access the services they need to help them. An additional approximately 10 million children are subject to increasing risk factors that could lead to mental ill-health in the near future. Families can play a key role in the prevention and treatment of mental ill-health in CYP; helping them to develop protective factors to counteract risk factors, and facilitating self-help which can be very effective as a first-line treatment, and as part of the therapeutic alliance between the CYP, clinicians and families. But this requires families to have the vital knowledge, skills and tools. We have been working with 40 parents/children to develop Headway&reg;, an evidence-based innovative digital medical device to facilitate Family-based Self-help for the mental health of CYP - assisting prevention, building resilience, enabling early intervention, and supporting treatment. This particular project will build upon the initial Parent Toolkit module (see www.Headway.Family), which was built by families for families in collaboration with clinical experts. Using the same collaborative family/clinical approach, and utilising a leading-edge technical team, we will develop a functioning version of more modules, providing Insight Tools and Therapeutic Activities for Family-based Self-help. To ensure that Headway&reg; is useable by families at all levels of health, and general, literacy, we will then test its useability with 50 more families &ndash; through self-report questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Our goal is to create and test new modules for Headway&reg; which will help families to build the mental health of their CYP in the most evidence-based, inclusive, engaging, and effective way. The results will be publicly available, through Headway&reg;, and enable us to seek further funding to produce more modules which will enable Family-based Self-help for the wide range of risk-factors driving mental ill-health which commonly affects CYP, so that everyone can benefit from evidence-based early intervention, whatever clinical support may (or may not) be available to them.

Lay abstract: Early intervention can enable recovery from mental ill-health in children and young people (CYP). However, currently 374,000 mentally unwell children are on long waiting lists for specialist treatment, and a further approximately 2 million children don t yet meet the threshold to access the services they need to help them. An additional approximately 10 million children are subject to increasing risk factors that could lead to mental ill-health in the near future. Families can play a key role in the prevention and treatment of mental ill-health in CYP; helping them to develop protective factors to counteract risk factors, and facilitating self-help which can be very effective as a first-line treatment, and as part of the therapeutic alliance between the CYP, clinicians and families. But this requires families to have the vital knowledge, skills and tools. We have been working with 40 parents/children to develop Headway&reg;, an evidence-based innovative digital medical device to facilitate Family-based Self-help for the mental health of CYP - assisting prevention, building resilience, enabling early intervention, and supporting treatment. This particular project will build upon the initial Parent Toolkit module (see www.Headway.Family), which was built by families for families in collaboration with clinical experts. Using the same collaborative family/clinical approach, and utilising a leading-edge technical team, we will develop a functioning version of more modules, providing Insight Tools and Therapeutic Activities for Family-based Self-help. To ensure that Headway&reg; is useable by families at all levels of health, and general, literacy, we will then test its useability with 50 more families &ndash; through self-report questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. Our goal is to create and test new modules for Headway&reg; which will help families to build the mental health of their CYP in the most evidence-based, inclusive, engaging, and effective way. The results will be publicly available, through Headway&reg;, and enable us to seek further funding to produce more modules which will enable Family-based Self-help for the wide range of risk-factors driving mental ill-health which commonly affects CYP, so that everyone can benefit from evidence-based early intervention, whatever clinical support may (or may not) be available to them.

Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS
Health categories: MENTAL HEALTH