Overview

The Child and Family eHub is a digital platform that aims to improve the use of existing primary health, mental health and social care systems. The eHub will support families with children aged from 0 to 12 years, especially those who are facing adversities, to address mental health need.

Our approach

Families will be supported to access the right service through a stepped-care pathway and triaging based on acuteness, complexity and severity of needs (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Child and Family eHub concept.

 

Families

We’re working with families with children aged from 0 to 12 years to design, test, implement and evaluate the eHub in three pilot sites:

  • Wyndham Vale, VIC
  • Marrickville, NSW
  • Fairfield, NSW

The communities were involved in user-centred design of the eHub, development of a minimum viable product (MVP) and evaluation of the eHub MVP website.

Technology partner

We’ve partnered with Curve Tomorrow to deliver a locally-tailored MVP that can be scaled and adapted for wider deployment in communities across Australia (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Child and Family eHub approach.

Service providers

We’re working with service providers to integrate key information for families including a health directory database supported through Infoxchange, and parent and caregiver advice through the Raising Children Network.

Evaluation will consider whether the MVP:

  • increases families’ use of information and the primary health, mental health and social services system
  • improves mental health outcomes through adequate and responsive service delivery for caregivers with children aged from 0 to 12 years. 

Future funding to scale the eHub to additional sites will depend upon evaluation outcomes.

Our impact and achievements

  • We completed user-centred design with families in December 2022. This involved interviewing caregivers of children aged from 0 to 12 years from across the three pilot sites.
  • Through the design process we developed caregiver personas, story maps of specific product features and functionality and a holistic journey map of the entire user experience.
  • This provided a foundation to develop and test a prototype of our MVP alongside caregivers, and incorporate detailed specifications based on their input.
  • Curve Tomorrow developed the MVP in 2023 and caregivers took part in acceptance testing the site.
  • Evaluation of the eHub MVP website commenced in February 2024 and we aim to complete evaluation with caregivers by December 2024. We're actively recruiting 270 caregivers across the three pilot sites. This will enable us to assess the extent to which the eHub supports caregiver needs to find services, information, online programs and parent groups to support their family.

Our team

  • Prof Sharon Goldfeld, Principal Investigator, Centre for Community Child Health
  • Prof Harriet Hiscock, Chief Investigator, Centre for Community Child Health
  • Dr Suzy Honisett, Investigator, Centre for Community Child Health
  • Lisa Minton, eHub Project Co-ordinator, Centre for Community Child Health
  • Prof Kim Daniel, Health Economist for eHub evaluation, Centre for Community Child Health
  • Leanne Constable, Lived Experience Researcher, Centre for Community Child Health
  • Jackie Ding, Research Assistant, Centre for Community Child Health

Partners and funders

The Child and Family eHub is a partnership between the Centre for Community Child Health at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Sydney Local Health District, Ingham Institute, the Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, Karitane, Infoxchange, Raising Children Network, Curve Tomorrow and Sameview.

We’d like to thank and acknowledge our funding organisations. The Child and Family eHub is partly funded by the NHMRC through a Partnership Grant. 

Additional cash and in-kind contributions are funded by our partner organisations:

•    Ingham Institute: Cash and in-kind contributions
•    Sydney Local Health District: Cash and in-kind contributions
•    Victorian Department of Families, Fairness and Housing: Cash and in-kind contributions
•    Karitane: Cash and in-kind contributions
•    Infoxchange: In-kind contribution
•    Raising Children Network: In-kind contribution 
•    Curve Tomorrow: In-kind contribution
•    Sameview: In-kind contribution

Resources

The eHub MVP website can be accessed at www.childandfamilyehub.org.au

Note, the website currently only services families in our three trial site locations the Fairfield and Marrickville areas in NSW and the Wyndham area in Victoria.

Contact us

For more information, visit the eHub website.

If you'd like to ask the eHub team a question, or share a concern, please reach out to: [email protected].