Practitioners’ application of Let’s Talk about Children intervention in adult mental health services

Abstract

Family-focused interventions can improve outcomes for families where a parent has a mental illness. One such intervention, Let's Talk about Children (Let's Talk), is a series of parent-practitioner conversations in adult mental health with demonstrated improved outcomes for child, parent, and family well-being. This study used a questionnaire to understand the application of Let's Talk by n = 73 trained practitioners from eight adult mental health services who were previously involved in a randomized controlled study in Victoria, Australia. Data were analysed to establish the application of Let's Talk, and statistical analyses were undertaken to identify what influenced practitioners' delivery of Let's Talk. The study details how practitioners used Let's Talk and indicates that most used it as designed, with the majority offering it to parents and approximately 40% delivering it. The findings indicate there is a decline over time in both the number of practitioners using Let's Talk and the number of deliveries over time. Practitioners' use of Let's Talk was influenced by their gender, profession, access to support, time since training, and caseload. The article discusses the implications of these results for sustaining Let's Talk in adult mental health services. While this study gives a baseline of practitioners' application of Let's Talk, further exploration of the experience of practitioners and parents as well as other system factors will be helpful to understand barriers and enablers to continued practice.

Continued capacity: Factors of importance for organizations to support continued Let's Talk practice – a mixed‐methods study

“…Additionally, AMHS with current practice of Let’s Talk was derived from a previously study that collected practitioner data (Allchin et al . 2020a). Of the practitioners ( n = 73) who returned the practitioner survey, 10 practitioners from four AMHS had delivered Let’s Talk in the past 12 months (Service 1 ( n = 1), Service 2 ( n = 1), Service 4 ( n = 7), and Service 7 ( n = 1)) (Allchin et al .…”

“…A follow‐up study explored the application of Let’s Talk by practitioners in those eight AMHS trained during the RCT using a questionnaire with closed and open‐ended questions (Allchin et al . 2020a). Allchin et al .…”

“…Allchin et al . (2020a) established that four AMHS had practitioners continuing to deliver Let’s Talk in the past 12 months.…”

“…The study documents AMHS implementation process and current organizational capacity to support Let’s Talk 12 months after the trial. The relationship between current organizational capacity and continued delivery by practitioners in the past 12 months is explored through comparison with Allchin et al .’s (2020a) study of practitioners’ application of Let’s Talk.…”

“…These were summed to give a total score by service and by current capacity. Scoring of the organization’s current capacity was compared to Allchin et al .’s (2020a) study of practitioners’ application of Let’s Talk to identify links between the current organizational capacity score and AMHS with practitioners continuing to deliver Let’s Talk.…”