Play@home in practice: health visitors' views of perceived facilitators and barriers to programme implementation.

Health visitors in Scotland gift 'play@home', a book-based early intervention programme, to parents as part of the universal health visiting service. The provision of health improvement information to parents is recognised as a core function of health visiting and yet evidence shows that not every family receives the play@home resources. This paper discusses the perceived facilitators and barriers to implementing this programme through exploring the views of ten health visitors and four health visiting managers in two health board areas in Scotland. The findings conclude that increasingly vulnerable families, supported by fewer qualified health visitors, present challenges to the health visiting service. The play@home programme is valued by health visitors as a flexible tool with which to engage with families. Collaborative working with other services enhances provision and play@home does become embedded in practice over time. Strategic policy links to raise the profile of play@home are improving.

Impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of children and young people: an umbrella review.

BACKGROUND: Over the past 3 years, a multitude of studies have highlighted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the mental health of children and young people (CYP). In this umbrella review, we synthesise global evidence on the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of CYP from existing systematic reviews with and/or without meta-analysis. METHODS: Adopting the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, we evaluated 349 citations and identified 24 eligible reviews with medium to high methodological quality to be reviewed narratively. RESULTS: Most of the reviews reported a high prevalence of anxiety disorders, depression, suicidal behaviour, eating disorders and other mental health problems. Most studies that used data at multiple time points indicate a significant increase in mental health problems in CYP, particularly in females and older adolescents. CONCLUSIONS: Multipronged psychosocial care services, policies and programmes are needed to alleviate the burden of mental health problems in CYP as a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated global health measures. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42021276312.