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Acceptability and Outcomes of the Cool Little Kids Parenting Group Program for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families Within an Australian Population-Based Study

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Abstract

This feasibility study explored suitability of a preventive intervention for internalising problems in young children for culturally and linguistically diverse families in Australia. A subsample of 62 families whose main language at home was other than English was selected from a population-based randomised trial of the Cool Little Kids parenting program. The population trial recruited 545 inhibited preschool children. Measures included family demographics, feedback post-intervention and child internalising problems at longitudinal follow-up. Parents of children whose main language at home was not English gave feedback that Cool Little Kids was helpful for managing their inhibited child’s emotional distress. Significantly fewer intervention than control children whose main language at home was not English had separation anxiety symptoms after 2 years (M (SD) = 3.00 (3.15) versus 5.95 (3.98), p = 0.041). Further work to expand accessibility of Cool Little Kids to recent immigrant parents who do not speak English could be worthwhile.

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Notes

  1. So that follow-up questionnaires were not overly long and burdensome to families, the SDQ-emotional was included at 1-year, while the PAS-R was included at 2-years (closer to the time when Rapee’s original trial found effects on this measure [21]).

  2. Child anxiety diagnoses were not assessed at baseline. As this was a translational trial, we did not want to over-burden families and wanted delivery as it would typically be in the real world (where formal diagnoses would not be made).

  3. Sample size of 176 would have power to detect all medium effect size reductions in Table 7 between the intervention and control arms, with 80% power at two-sided significance of 0.05.

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Acknowledgements

We thank preschool services and families in the Victorian cities of Banyule, Boroondara, Frankston, Kingston, Knox, Maroondah, Whitehorse and Wyndham who took part in this research. This research was supported by Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Project Grants 607302 and 1079956, and by the Victorian Government’s Operational Infrastructure Support Program. The funder had no role in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe University (Melbourne Campus), Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Jordan Kha & Jordana K. Bayer

  2. Centre for Emotional Health, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Ronald M. Rapee

  3. Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, Australia

    Jordana K. Bayer

  4. Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia

    Jordana K. Bayer

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  1. Jordan Kha
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Correspondence to Jordana K. Bayer.

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All procedures performed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Kha, J., Rapee, R.M. & Bayer, J.K. Acceptability and Outcomes of the Cool Little Kids Parenting Group Program for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Families Within an Australian Population-Based Study. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev 54, 949–960 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-021-01293-5

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