‘Gaining health and wellbeing from birth to three’: a web-based positive parenting programme for primary care settings

ABSTRACT

Current models of pediatric care include parental support as part of health promotion in the early years. This study introduces the modality of e-health by describing the universal ‘Gaining Health and Wellbeing from Birth to Three’ programme, reporting on the level of programme satisfaction among 249 parents and 350 professionals. The average level of satisfaction was very high for both groups. The professionals showed significantly higher rates than the parents in the ‘Activity’ factor, but there were no significant differences with regard to the ‘Programme experience’ and ‘Parenting impact’ factors. Parents living in single-parent families were more satisfied, whereas professionals who were more heavily engaged with the Internet were less satisfied with the parenting impact of the programme. In sum, this study has demonstrated that a cost-efficient (brief and fully automated) structured programme was able to reach a large population of participants and satisfy their expectations about the programme.

KEYWORDS:

• E-health
• parental support
• programme satisfaction
• primary care settings
• early intervention

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Spanish Ministry of Health, Social Services, and Equality (Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad: Subdirección General de Promoción de la Salud y Vigilancia en Salud Pública), which supported the production of the programme and designed the online course for professionals to promote the face-to-face version of the GH&W programme. The authors are grateful to the team of applied researchers who designed and prepared the GH&W programme. Finally, authors are also grateful to the experts and professionals who made valuable comments and offered guidance to help us improve the GH&W programme.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Enrique Callejas is a Research Assistant at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain.His research interests relate to Family Intervention and Early Child Development.

Sonia Byrne, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain. Her research specialises in Positive Parenting, Elaboration, Implementation and Evaluation of Positive Parenting programs; and Neurobiology of Maternal Neglect.

María José Rodrigo, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of La Laguna, La Laguna, Spain. Priority research lines are Positive Parenting, Elaboration, Implementation and Evaluation of Positive Parenting programs; and Neurobiology of Maternal Neglect. She coordinates the Experts Group on Positive Parenting of the Spanish Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equity and the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces.

ORCID

Enrique Callejas http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1259-901X

Sonia Byrne http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9267-3354

María José Rodrigo http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5504-886X

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport [grant number FPU16/01039].