A Randomised Controlled Trial of Healthier Wealthier Families in Sweden

Ameliorating Child Poverty Through Connecting Economic Services With Child Health Services (ACCESS): A Randomised Controlled Trial of the Healthier Wealthier Families Model in Sweden

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.

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

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.