Find your village: co-designing a community asset-based peer support intervention for wellbeing, social connectedness, and early child development among migrant families during the first 1001 days.

BACKGROUND

One in five children born in England and Wales has a parent born in the Global South. Migrant families are often marginalised, experience adverse environments, lack social support, and have highly stressed pregnancies; their children are at risk of adverse long-term outcomes. Interventions to improve early child development are highly effective and cost-effective, but often do not reach marginalised communities effectively.

OBJECTIVES

To develop an asset-based community peer support intervention to improve family wellbeing, social connectedness, and early child development, addressing one migrant community's strengths and needs in detail; and to articulate its transferability to different contexts.

METHODS

This participatory mixed-methods approach to complex intervention design was co-produced with community partners. We constructed an ecocultural model of challenges to early child development in local Somali refugee families, integrating findings from public and professional consultations; systematic reviews of qualitative and quantitative evidence; and local qualitative research and epidemiology. We then collaboratively developed, refined, and prototyped a flexible asset-based peer support intervention to address potentially modifiable factors.

RESULTS

The key transferable functions of this intervention are: reaching out to engage, enable, and advocate for families; organising group activities; and advocating for neighbourhood environment improvements. This has potential to improve wellbeing, child development, social connectedness, and relationships with agencies.

CONCLUSIONS

This intervention is designed to mobilise migrant community assets, and improve wellbeing, developmental opportunities, and community connectedness, flexibly and transferably through local co-production. It requires evaluation for its effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, and for potential to reduce inequalities and disrupt cycles of disadvantage.