Evaluating family-centred service using a measure of parents' perceptions

This article describes the use of a newly-developed measure of parents' perceptions of health care providers' behaviours (Measure of Processes of Care-MPOC) to evaluate the family centredness of children's rehabilitation services. The measure was developed with the participation of more than 1600 parents of children with chronic neurodevelopmental conditions throughout Ontario. It assesses five domains: enabling and partnership; providing general information; providing specific information about the child; coordinated and comprehensive care; and respectful and supportive care. By comparing the perceptions of parents receiving services from three different types of organizations or programmes, we demonstrated that the MPOC can pick up differences between parents in their experiences of caregiving. We also demonstrated that the MPOC is able to detect differences in how parents view the family-centredness of services provided by individual centres. The data indicate that the MPOC has appreciable utility in providing programmes and services with a description of their current level of family-centred service as perceived by parents. The strengths, limitations and potential uses of the measure in other contexts are discussed.