Tresilian Family Care Centres

Tresillian assists close to 80,000 families with a baby or young child each year. The support, care and confidence provided by Tresillian Family Care Centres enables parents of young children across Australia to raise their children within their own cultural context and values.

The research collaboration between Tresillian and Midwifery, Child and Family Health has greatly contributed to the advancement of child and family health knowledge using research evidence. Drawing on this evidence, Tresillian continues to engage, educate and support families in Australia with their up to date parenting information, links to resources, assistance and support for parents during the early years of raising their children.

Research projects

Parent Child Interaction (PCI) Assessment Implementation Study

The PCI assessment scale is a highly regarded clinical and research tool. To use this scale, registered nurses must have gained and maintained reliability with the University of Washington Seattle Barnard Centre. The PCI assessment allows nurses to develop with the parent, interventions that meet the specific needs of the parent and infant. This research is investigating the PCI assessment scale and its associated parenting intervention design and implementation process within Tresillian’s three residential unit.

Pilot study of a digital program to improve sleep outcomes for infants and young children

The piloting of the SleepWellBaby digital program is the final phase of a three phase research study (the first phase investigated parents’ need for infant sleep information and support; second phase validated questionnaires used within the digital application). This final phase is piloting the SleepWellBaby digital program that aims to improve sleep in children zero to five years.

The program digitises specialist sleep support from the Tresillian residential program in order to improve accessibility of care, particularly for families in regional areas. The pilot study involves collecting outcome data from families engaging in the digital program. Recruitment is occurring through the Tresillian website, HCF members and social media promotion. Participants engage in the program as usual, with an estimated completion time between 7 and 14 days then complete a post assessment at 1 month. Outcomes assess infant and child sleep, parental sleep and parental mental health. This is a collaborative project with researchers from UTS, SleepFit and Tresillian.

Enhancing access to parenting service through the use of digital technology supported practices

This research aims to provide comprehensive information required for the planning, implementation and evaluation of parenting using digital technologies for service delivery with parenting/child and family services in Australian and New Zealand.

Using a qualitative approach of semi-structured interviews with practitioners and managers, the findings will inform recommendations for the use of new digital technologies to support and enhance future delivery of parenting services.

This research will benefit the Australian Association of Parenting and Child Health and individual Early Parenting Services across Australia and New Zealand. It will assist with effective technologies used to provide parenting services in terms of staff recruitment and retention and the necessary resources and change management requirements for implementation and evaluation. This is a collaborative research project with researchers from Curtin University, Ngala WA, Tresillian/UTS and Karitane/UNSW.

Evaluation of a postnatal depression therapy group intervention

A study that aims to identify the effectiveness of postnatal depression therapy groups developed and facilitated by Tresillian.