SUCCEED Child Feeding: What should tube-feeding training for carers look like to be a small thing with a big impact?

Project Member(s): Hopwood, N., Regmi, A.

Funding or Partner Organisation: Sydney Children's Hospital (Sydney Childrens Hospital Foundation Grants)
Sydney Children's Hospital (Sydney Childrens Hospital Foundation Grants)

Start year: 2023

Summary: Children with complex feeding difficulties often need to feed through a feeding tube. Typically one parent, usually the mother, is trained in how to do so, prior to leaving hospital with their child. This places a huge burden on that primary carer, and can restrict the family in a wide range of ways. The SUCCEED Child Feeding Alliance plans to develop a new, affordable tube-feeding training course so families can choose someone else to learn to tube-feed (husband, grandparent, daycare worker). This project will investigate what clinicians and parents see as essential to include in such a course, and what other aspects could add value to it, for example through modelling tube positivity, and addressing the tube-feeding life cycle (as per Hopwood et al 2021).

FOR Codes: Families and family services, Neonatal and child health, Continuing and community education, Paediatrics, Family and household studies

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.