iTips for Tuning In Mobile App Development

Opportunity

Working with the Vermont Child Welfare Training Partnership, we helped to develop a smartphone app to supplement a 12-week in-person trauma-informed training for child welfare resource parents.

Approach

Consumer-based technology development

We believe content experts and local stakeholders are in the best position to inform the development of innovative approaches for supporting child welfare resource parents (kinship, foster, and adoptive parents). Therefore, we gathered, analyzed, and summarized qualitative data from interviews and focus groups with clinical mobile app development and content experts, in-person trauma training developers and trainers, child welfare resource parents, postnatal nurses and caregivers of opioid exposed infants, and licensed drug and alcohol counselors.

The results

HSRI and the Vermont Child Welfare Training Partnership worked with an app development company to design and pilot test an app for child welfare resource caregivers that incorporates the findings of the interviews and focus groups, including brief training reminders and words of encouragement, ongoing access to trauma-informed parenting resources, self-tracking tools, a module for resource parents with opioid exposed infants, and an interface that is both engaging and user-friendly.

Impact

Using key informant interviews and resource parent focus groups, HSRI recommended app content and structure to support the transfer of learning from in-person trauma training to actual implementation in homes and communities.