Kate Dawes

Project Title: Support needs of children affected by parental acquired brain injury (ABI)

Institution: Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia

Time frame for the PhD: For completion, end 2023

About the research: Brain injuries can instantly change lives and families. We see it every day in our practice. Dependent children are often a neglected cohort for receiving intervention and support in adult health care setting which can negatively impact on their interpersonal relationships, family functioning and increase their risk of developing childhood psychopathology. My doctorate explores the lived experiences of children after a parental ABI. It engages with intergenerational consumers (children, adults and clinicians), to understand and respond to their expressed support needs and the development of age-appropriate digital ABI educational technology. Fundamentally, my research is moving from sequalae, to a solution, as currently no ABI digital resources exists for children.

Qualitative, co-design and quantitative approaches are used as a methodological framework via 6 studies to:

Explore perspectives of children and families experiencing parental ABI, as well as clinicians regarding the concept of an optimum digital resource that could support children and facilitate improved clinical practices.

Pilot Study (Study 1) - Exploring lived experiences and support recommendations.

National ABI survey (Study 3) - Investigating the importance of different ABI topics to be included in the prototype.

Focus Groups (children, adults, clinicians) (Study 4) - Defining the structure of the prototype.

Understand and evaluate structured and clinical interventions recommended in the literature - Scoping Review (Study 2)

To Develop and augment the digital resource prototype - Working Group (Study 5)

Evaluate the digital resource, assessing usability and acceptability (and post-doc, clinical outcomes) - Usability Testing (Study 6)