Interventions for child development based on the Touchpoints Model: scoping review

Area of Science:

• Child Development
• Parenting Interventions
• Primary Health Care Nursing

Background:

• The Touchpoints Model offers a framework for supporting child development and parent-child interaction.
• Understanding the characteristics of interventions based on this model is crucial for optimizing early childhood support.
• Existing literature lacks a comprehensive overview of these interventions.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically map the characteristics of interventions designed to promote child development using the Touchpoints Model.
• To identify key features of parent/caregiver and child interventions from pregnancy to six years of age.

Main Methods:

• A comprehensive scoping review guided by JBI Reviewer's Manual recommendations.
• Searches across nine databases, gray literature, and reference lists.
• Descriptive analysis of twelve included publications using Rayyan for study selection.

Main Results:

• Twelve publications were included, with interventions concentrated from pregnancy to three years of age.
• Interventions primarily focused on disseminating Touchpoints content, parenting aspects, and overall child development.
• Most interventions were delivered by nurses in Primary Health Care settings via home visits, individually and face-to-face.

Conclusions:

• Interventions demonstrated potential for positive child development and parenting outcomes.
• Variability in interventions hindered mapping of specific effective characteristics.
• Key findings include a predominance of early-life interventions, nurse-led primary care delivery, and increased parental understanding and child interaction.