Barriers and facilitators to parent-delivered interventions for children with or infants at risk of cerebral palsy. An integrative review informed by behaviour change theory.
Jill Massey, Phillip Harniess, Deborah Chinn and 1 others
PMID 38627931WHAT IT FOUND
Parents delivering home therapy for children with or at risk of cerebral palsy often felt underprepared, time pressed, and emotionally strained.
Clear knowledge, coaching for skills, realistic goals, flexible home programmes, family support, and stable therapist relationships were described as facilitating delivery.
Key findings
01Parents often lacked skills for home delivery, but coaching, modelling, and guided practice were described as ways parents could develop skills.
02Individualised programmes devised in the home were easier to integrate into routines, and involving wider family was described as adding resources, skills, and motivation.
03Therapist relationships and organisational conditions shaped parent delivery; trusting relationships were described as helping, while staff shortages, inflexible scheduling, and poor continuity were described as hindering it.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The literature search lacked independent duplicate searching. Lower quality studies were not excluded, and some included studies had weak ethical reporting, limited blinding, unclear randomisation, confounding, or non-standard survey measures. The included studies were dominated by mothers, so fathers’ views were rarely represented. Only English-language articles were included, so relevant non-English work may be missing. Some included samples were not exclusively children with or at risk of cerebral palsy, and some intervention descriptions lacked detail. The findings are themes about barriers and facilitators, not tested effects of any strategy on child outcomes.
Declared interests
Funding came from the National Institute for Health Research Integrated Clinical Academic Programme Clinical Doctoral Research Fellowship. The authors stated that the views expressed are their own and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care.
The easy way to misread this
Do not treat these themes as proof that parent-delivered interventions improve child outcomes. This review synthesised barriers and facilitators; it did not test whether any recommendation changes effectiveness.