What is The Visible Difference Parenting Toolkit?

The Visible Difference Parenting Toolkit is a self-guided e-book developed by researchers at the Centre for Appearance Research, with input from parents with lived experience and specialist health professionals. It is informed by evidence from a series of research projects carried out by Dr Maia Thornton, plus previous research with parents of children with appearance affecting conditions and injuries. It aims to improve the wellbeing of parents and carers of children with visible differences, such as alopecia.

To determine the impact of using the toolkit, an evaluation was carried out, which consisted of online surveys and interviews with parents and carers. The researchers wish to express a big thank you to everyone who took part in the research, including parents/carers of children with alopecia.

What was the impact of The Visible Difference Parenting Toolkit?

During the research, parents and carers were asked to use the toolkit and evaluate if it was helpful. They surveyed 173 parents and carers after they used the toolkit, who experienced:

• Increased confidence in their parenting skills
• Increased self-compassion
• Increased ability to adapt to difficult situations, thoughts and emotions, in a way that was consistent with their values and goals
• Decreased anxiety
• Decreased depression
• Decreased parenting stress

Some examples of what parents and carers said about the toolkit were:

“It’s highlighting the importance of actually taking care of yourself first.”

“It’s already made a huge impact to my wellbeing and how I’ve dealt with things, and how I’ll probably deal with things in the future.”

“I haven’t seen anything else really… This was the only thing that I’d come across that specifically answered questions from a parents/carers point of view.”

“I just felt so empowered by it. I felt it was giving us a lot of tools.”

What do these findings mean?

Based on this evaluation, The Visible Difference Parenting Toolkit appears to be effective at promoting psychological wellbeing of parents and carers of children with visible differences.

How can parents and carers access The Visible Difference Parenting Toolkit ?

The Visible Difference Parenting Toolkit can be accessed and downloaded for free from The Visible Difference Support Hub, a website with resources developed and tested at the Centre for Appearance Research:

The Visible Difference Support Hub

 

A 2-page PDF version of the research summary can be downloaded below: 

Research Summary - 2-page PDF