Syndrome specific modules to enhance the Stepping Stones Triple P public health intervention.

Background: Service responses to behaviour phenotypes include care by expert clinicians, syndrome-specific clinics, disability-specific mental health services and generic mental health services. While these services contribute to care, they are often of limited accessibility.

Methods: We describe a population-wide public health intervention aimed at increasing the accessibility of services to the target population. Stepping Stones Triple P (SSTP) is a public health intervention of known efficacy in reducing behaviour problems when delivered to parents of children aged 0-12 with mixed developmental disabilities.

Results: The strategy we discuss involves enhancing SSTP with modules for specific causes of developmental disabilities including Down, Fetal Alcohol, Fragile X, Prader-Willi and Williams syndromes.

Conclusions: We propose that enhancing SSTP with syndrome specific modules will increase the accessibility of support to families who have a child with a specific behaviour phenotype. We suggest that future research should confirm the public health impact of the modified SSTP programme using the RE-AIM framework.