R34 Family Navigator Enhancing Early Engagement

Overview

For the current study, the investigators will develop, implement, and evaluate web-based and consultative training for Family Advocates employed at Children's Advocacy Centers (CACs) across the United States to enhance children's early engagement in evidence-based mental health treatment. The interactive web-based training will embed key targets of knowledge and skills related to family engagement, trauma, evidence-based practices (EBP), and EBP services in the community. Seventy-five CACs who apply to participate in training will be randomized to a webinar-only training group, a webinar plus consultation training group, and a delayed (waitlist) control group. It is hypothesized that the Family Advocates and CAC Directors will report high levels of satisfaction with the training. More importantly, it is also hypothesized that webinar training will improve Family Advocates' knowledge, resulting in minor improvement in EBP engagement, while the addition of consultation in the second training group will lead to increased use of engagement skills, thereby resulting in greater improvement in family engagement in EBP.

Partnering with the accrediting board for CACs, the National Children's Alliance (NCA), the investigators will implement and evaluate training for Family Advocates to enhance early engagement in EBP (E3 training). Two levels of E3 training will be tested. The first level, webinar-only (E3w), will be web-based training on MH screening, EBP identification, trauma and effects of trauma, and engagement strategies that directly target known hindrances to accessing EBP in high risk, traumatized populations. The second level, webinar plus consultation (E3w+c), will add short-term consultation with experts in engagement and mental health. Consultation will target Family Advocates' skills in engagement, mental health screening, and coordination of care through strategies found to enhance skill acquisition. The investigators propose to test two key mechanisms of change for improving EBP engagement: knowledge (e.g., EBP identification) and skills (e.g., addressing caregiver perceptions of MH). To examine these change mechanisms, the investigators will implement the feasibility study designed to accomplish three tasks: (1) test if E3w training provides incremental benefits in engagement rates over the no training comparison group, (2) examine if E3w+c further improves outcomes beyond the E3w engagement rates and (3) examine mediating and moderating factors impacting outcome and implementation, including cost. The hypotheses that E3w will improve Family Advocates' knowledge, resulting in minor improvement in EBP engagement, and that addition of consultation in E3w+c will lead to increased use of engagement skills, resulting in greater improvement in family engagement in EBP, will be tested. Using NCA's innovative data capture systems, including the Outcome Management System (OMS; designed to obtain follow-up surveys from families and multidisciplinary team members), as well as a specific data tracking procedure using REDCap, the investigators will track case management details (including mental health needs and referrals) from each site randomized. In addition, knowledge learned via the training (pre- and post-knowledge assessments) will be tracked. In addition, NCA quantitative data on family engagement in EBP will be drawn, and the data submitted and integrated with pre- and post-training surveys of Family Advocates and CAC leaders measuring knowledge and perceptions of the training, including its utility, strengths, weaknesses, and costs. Applications were released to CACs nationwide in October of 2019, and sites were officially selected and randomized to groups using an adaptive randomization procedure such that a broad range of the selected covariates that are hypothesized to influence key outcomes occurs in all conditions. Participants from sites, including Advocates and Senior Leaders, will officially consent and enroll in the study in mid-December 2019. Participants will provide study data via an online data platform (i.e., REDCap). The outcomes of interest are the time-varying and CAC-varying provider fidelity and knowledge, as well as the family screening and engagement in treatment. Linear mixed effects models will be used to evaluate these outcomes, with generalized versions of these applied whenever the distribution of the outcome variable and the residuals suggest these to be appropriate