Parents' and carers' understandings of the nature and purposes of parent-based intervention groups delivered by the paediatric Speech and Language Therapy service in Telford & Wrekin and Shropshire Primary Care Trusts: An exploratory study

Abstract

Speech and language therapists regularly offer indirect group interventions providing parental advice or training, rather than direct treatments for communication-disabled children. Although this has been found to benefit children, there has been little research into the impact of such parent-based intervention groups on parents themselves. This is despite evidence that parents and speech and language therapists have differing perceptions regarding aspects of speech and language therapy and children's communication development. The aim of this study was to explore parents and carers' experiences of attending parent-based intervention groups in a local context, in order to investigate their perceptions of the nature and purposes of the groups they had attended and to develop a preliminary theoretical understanding of their experience. Nine mothers and one father who had completed at least one parent-based intervention course were interviewed. This generated descriptive qualitative data, which was analysed using grounded theory approaches to reflect the parents' priorities and concerns. Themes of parents' experiences of intervention sessions, parental gains during session attendance, intervention facilitating processes of personal change and empowerment, and impacts of parent-based intervention courses in the wider context, were identified. The study findings were used to produce a description, grounded in the data, of parents' understandings of the nature and purposes of parent-based intervention groups in speech and language therapy. Connections were made between the role played by the groups in the experience of parents in the current study and processes of parental adaptation and empowerment described in the literature on chronic illness and disability in children. A theoretical model of parents' experience of parent-based intervention groups was also developed. This study provides a preliminary overview of parents' experiences of parent-based intervention groups and includes a number of findings that support discrete observations and suggestions extant in the literature. It adds to the information available on parents' perceptions of speech and language therapy and indicates areas for further research into the costs and benefits of intervention from a parental perspective. The study findings, connections identified between the groups and processes of parental adaptation and empowerment, and the theoretical model presented have potential implications for clinical practice in the local area and may be transferable to other settings. However, the study was limited in size and scope and further research to test these findings will be required.