Evaluation on the Effectiveness on the Implementation of WHO-CST Programme in Hong Kong: A RCT Protocol

Developmental delays/disorders in young children are identified as a public health priority. WHO and Autism Speaks co-designed a training programme titled “WHO-Caregiver Skills Training” (WHO-CST) which aims at providing training for caregivers whose children are with possible symptoms of Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms and pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), so that they can learn better strategies on managing the daily lives of their children and foster better communication between the parent-children dyad. The WHO-CST programme is currently implemented in more than 30 regions worldwide and it started in Hong Kong from 2018. As the programme is newly developed, only a few studies tried to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme in qualitative approaches, or in quantitative approach with relatively small sample (e.g. n < 10). In the present study, our team, who is responsible for the implementation and evaluation of the WHO-CST programme in Hong Kong, attempt to assess the effectiveness of the training in WHO-CST under a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design with about 120 eligible caregivers who will be randomly assigned in experimental and control groups. Our measurement will include the Joint Engagement Rating Inventory (JERI) developed by experts in WHO to gauge how parents engage their children in a 10-minute video recording their dyadic interaction and behaviors in a defined play setting. A set of other measurements on the caregiver’s experience of using intervention skills and their enhancement of knowledges will also be measured. We hypothesize that caregivers in treatment group will have better growth in scores of both JERI and measurements of other outcome than the wait-list control group’s after the 12-week WHO-CST training, and also persistence of skill and knowledge level should also be found after a 30-day follow-up test.