A scoping review of 'think-family' approaches in healthcare settings

'Think-family' child health approaches treat child and parent/carer health as inter-related. They are promoted within health policy internationally (also called 'family paediatrics' or 'whole-family', 'family-centred' approaches or 'child-centred' approaches within adult services).

We reviewed publications of think-family interventions. We developed a typology of these interventions using thematic analysis of data extracted from the included studies.

We included 62 studies (60% USA and 18% UK); 45/62 (73%) treated the parent as patient, helping the child by addressing parental mental health, substance and alcohol misuse and/or domestic violence. Our typology details three common mechanisms of change in relevant interventions: screening, health promotion and developing relationships (inter-professional and parent-professional).

Policy-makers, practitioners and researchers can use our typology to develop and evaluate think-family approaches within healthcare. Strong relationships between parents and professionals are key in think-family approaches and should be considered in service design. Although helping the child through the parent may be a good place to start for service development, care is needed to ensure parental need does not eclipse child need. Strategies that reach out to the parent behind the child (child as patient) and which work simultaneously with parent and child warrant attention.