Parenting Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (PACT): an innovative online course for families of children with Cerebral Palsy

INTERVENTION: PACT is a parenting intervention grounded in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for parents of children with Cerebral Palsy. PACT includes ACT technologies already established in an RCT as effective with families of children with CP, including mindfulness, experiential acceptance and cognitive defusion (Whittingham et al., 2014; Whittingham et al., in press; Whittingham, Sanders, et al., 2013). It includes some techniques from the established parenting literature but focuses on strategies to enhance the parent‐child relationship and promote parental emotional responsiveness. An online course was created using an open source course management system for the purpose of the current study. The course incorporates: virtual written text, video presentations, screen‐based interactive activities, journal activities, reflections, guided experiential and mindfulness exercises and participation in moderated discussion board. The course is offered as three modules with a fortnight to complete the content of each module and a four week break after that to allow for practise of the materials from the course. Overall the course lasts for 10 weeks), Parents will be able to move through each module's content with some flexibility. In addition, research participants will be offered Skype/phone sessions with a therapist as well as reminder text messages and emails. Skype/phone sessions will be offered weekly and up to 30 minutes in length, however the exact frequency and duration will vary according to participant need. Completion of activities within the course will be monitored. CONDITION: cerebral palsy mental health PRIMARY OUTCOME: Emotional availability within the parent‐child relationship, assessed by the Emotional Availability Scales, (Biringen, Fidler, Barrett, & Kubicek, 2005; Biringen, Robinson, & Emde, 1998) SECONDARY OUTCOME: Child behavioural and emotional difficulties assessed by the parent‐report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) Child motor functioning assessed by the parent‐report Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS), (Palisano, 1997) Parent wellbeing as measured by the Personal Wellbeing Index (International Wellbeing Group, 2013) ; Parent's perception of emotional availability within the parent‐child relationship assessed by the Emotional Availability‐Self Report (Vliegen, Luyten, & Biringen, 2009) Parental psychological flexibility as measured by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (Bond et al., in press) Parental psychological symptoms assessed by the parent‐report Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS‐21) (Lovibond & Lovibond, 1995) Parenting mindfulness assessed by the Interpersonal Mindfulness in Parenting Scale (IM‐P) (Duncan, 2007) INCLUSION CRITERIA: Parents with a child (2‐­6 years old) with Cerebral Palsy. As PACT uses integrated web‐based delivery parents are required to have: (1) reliable internet access at home (e.g. ADSL) and be committed to maintaining internet access for the duration of the study; (2) a mobile phone for receiving text messages; (3) an email address for receiving emails; and (4) access to Skype.