Well-being focused interventions for caregivers of children with developmental disabilities-a scoping review protocol

AbstractIntroductionChildren with developmental disabilities (DD) have complex health needs which imply that they will need assistance in many areas of their lives, a role usually assumed by family members. Family caregivers need to constantly balance the demands of providing care with their own needs, this may be overwhelming and may lead to elevated levels of stress, subsequently affecting their well-being. For optimum functioning of the child with DD, the caregiver would have to be in a state of good health, making it necessary to have interventions that will support caregivers’ well-being. This scoping review aims to identify and map the range of interventions available for caregivers of children with DD.Methods and analysisThis scoping review looks at well-being interventions of caregivers of children with DD. Two reviewers who are independent and blinded will search of articles from five databases, namely; CINAHL, Psych INFO, PubMed, ERIC and COCHRANE Library. Grey literature will be looked for from google scholar. Predetermined inclusion criteria will be used in the literature search. The findings will be summarized in a tabular form, followed by narrative text.Ethics and disseminationAs a scoping review of published literature, ethics approval is not required. Results will be disseminated through publication in a peer-reviewed journal.DiscussionThe proposed scoping review will give an extensive review of interventions aimed at improving the well-being of caregivers of children with DD. We hope that this scoping review will provide recommendations on well-being improving interventions for caregivers of children with DD. Additionally, the review will guide future work on intervention development and primary research in this field.RegistrationThis scoping review protocol has been registered with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/tkbrh)Strengths and limitations of this studyThis scoping review when completed will be the first study to identify and review systematically well-being focused interventions for caregivers of children with developmental disabilities.The scoping review will employ standard guidelines of Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis extension for scoping review (PRSMA-ScR).The search will cover a broad scope by using five databases as well as grey literature sources.Inter-rater reliability will be increased by at least two raters/reviewers doing abstract screening, full text screening and data extraction. A third reviewer will be included to resolve the disagreements which will arise from the other two reviewers.Quality assessment of studies included in the scoping review will be done.The scoping review will be limited to articles published in English and those from 2010 to 2021.