A Randomised Controlled Trial of Healthier Wealthier Families in Sweden

NCT ID: NCT05511961

Last Updated: 2025-06-22

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: TERMINATED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 31 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2022-09-01
• Study Completion Date: 2024-08-31

Brief Summary

Healthier Wealthier Families is a way of working, where child health nurses ask parents about their financial situation and connect them to a free financial help service, if needed. To test whether it helps families, the investigators will randomly select half of the families who want to take part to go to the service straight away and half around 3 months later. Both groups of parents will receive a book about parenting and finances straight away. The investigators will compare how the groups of parents answer on survey questions about meeting the costs of their children's needs, their financial knowledge, financial control, readiness to change, success on personal finance goals, mental health and financial stigma. The investigators predict that the parents who are offered the financial help service straight away will answer more positively on the survey questions. The investigators will ask all parents the survey questions again around 12 months later to see how they are doing.

Detailed Description

The Healthier Wealthier Families (HWF) model implements universal screening for economic hardship into child health services and creates a referral pathway to economic support services. To test this, the investigators will conduct a randomised control trial. A longitudinal follow-up with the cohort will explore whether any effects are maintained in the longer-term. The study hypotheses are that families who have received municipal budget and debt counselling services via the HWF model will report a lower rate of child material and social deprivation. Also, that the intervention arm will report greater financial knowledge, financial control, readiness for change, attainment of personal goals to improve one's financial situation, parental mental health and less financial stigma than the waitlist-control arm

Conditions

Material and Social Deprivation: An Enforced Lack of Necessary and Desirable Items to Lead an Adequate Life

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: PREVENTION
• Blinding Strategy: NONE

Study Groups

Intervention arm

Immediate referral to local budget and debt counselling service and a copy of 'Your child, your money', a financial guidance book for new parents

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Healthier Wealthier Families

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Budget and debt counselling will involve at least one meeting with a counsellor. Examples of assistance the counsellors can offer include: suggestions on ways to improve a participant's financial situation; checking eligibility and helping to apply for social welfare support; helping to organise finances and develop a budget; and assistance with debt management, threatening letters or harassment by debt collectors, or imminent house eviction. The municipal budget and debt counselling services involved in the trial will receive guidance on how to work preventatively with families, which will align with the content of the 'Your child, your money'. The book covers topics such as planning finances, consumer rights, private insurance, family law, parental leave, pensions, saving, and budgeting.

Waitlist-control arm

Immediately given a copy of 'Your child, your money' book, and referral to local budget and debt counselling service after a period of 3 months

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Healthier Wealthier Families

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Budget and debt counselling will involve at least one meeting with a counsellor. Examples of assistance the counsellors can offer include: suggestions on ways to improve a participant's financial situation; checking eligibility and helping to apply for social welfare support; helping to organise finances and develop a budget; and assistance with debt management, threatening letters or harassment by debt collectors, or imminent house eviction. The municipal budget and debt counselling services involved in the trial will receive guidance on how to work preventatively with families, which will align with the content of the 'Your child, your money'. The book covers topics such as planning finances, consumer rights, private insurance, family law, parental leave, pensions, saving, and budgeting.

Interventions

Healthier Wealthier Families

Budget and debt counselling will involve at least one meeting with a counsellor. Examples of assistance the counsellors can offer include: suggestions on ways to improve a participant's financial situation; checking eligibility and helping to apply for social welfare support; helping to organise finances and develop a budget; and assistance with debt management, threatening letters or harassment by debt collectors, or imminent house eviction. The municipal budget and debt counselling services involved in the trial will receive guidance on how to work preventatively with families, which will align with the content of the 'Your child, your money'. The book covers topics such as planning finances, consumer rights, private insurance, family law, parental leave, pensions, saving, and budgeting.

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

Inclusion Criteria

• Parent / caregiver of at least one child aged 0-5 years
• The family is listed at the participating child health care centre
• Parent / caregiver reports at least one risk factor for economic hardship on specified screening questions
• Parent / caregiver lives within the geographical areas served by the participating financial counselling service
• Parent / caregiver has given informed consent

Exclusion Criteria

• Parent / caregiver does not understand the recruitment invitation.
• Parent / caregiver is already an active user of a financial counselling service.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 18 Years
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

Uppsala University

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Anna Sarkadi

Professor

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Anna Sarkadi, Prof

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Uppsala University

Locations

Uppsala University

Uppsala, Uppland, Sweden

Countries

Sweden

References

Johansson N, Sarkadi A, Feldman I, Price AMH, Goldfeld S, Salonen T, Wijk K, Isaksson D, Kolic E, Stenquist S, Elg M, Lonn E, Wennelin J, Lindstrom L, Medina M, Aberg S, Viklund J, Warner G. Ameliorating Child poverty through Connecting Economic Services with child health Services (ACCESS): study protocol for a randomised controlled trial of the healthier wealthier families model in Sweden. BMC Public Health. 2022 Nov 25;22(1):2181. doi: 10.1186/s12889-022-14424-x.

Reference Type: DERIVED

PMID: 36434580 (View on PubMed)

Other Identifiers

2021-01415

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id