Can an online parenting intervention improve outcomes for children with a chronic health condition? A pilot study.

Childhood eczema is one of the most common chronic health conditions among children. There is no cure, and it places an enormous burden on affected children and their families. Interventions to help parents develop the skills to handle challenging child behaviour, manage their own stress, and implement treatment consistently can improve children’s health outcomes. Brief parenting intervention is effective in targeting the child behaviour and parenting challenges that can make condition management more difficult for parents; however, face-to-face intervention delivery poses a barrier to many families and limits accessibility and reach. This research will examine whether a self-directed online parenting intervention can deliver the same outcomes as a face-to-face group program, leading to improvements in symptom severity, treatment adherence, parenting stress, parenting practices, and child emotional and behavioural adjustment, with better accessibility and at lower cost. Given the current COVID-19 pandemic, it is essential that we harness online and telehealth approaches to ensure that evidence-based programs are able to be accessed by the families who need them. This research will examine a novel and unique application of an online parenting intervention that will complement existing health care services and make a significant difference to Australian children.