Evaluating an online quality improvement tool developed for family day care to promote healthier nutrition and physical activity practices.

Intervention name: Family Day Care Quality Improvement Toolkit A website or online tool called "Family Day Care Quality Improvement Toolkit" was developed by Early Start University of Wollongong, in collaboration with NSW Health, and contains many features to assist in quality improvement in the family day care (FDC) sector. FDC service providers and educators will have access to the same tool/website, however accessible features will differ. The available features will be determined when a login is created for each participant before utilising the tool; each participant’s login will specify whether the participant is a service provider or an educator. All tool features for both service providers and educators are optional in terms of frequency of usage, as each service provider will have different processes of reviewing their QIP and it is up to them how they would like to use the tool's features. The intervention group will be provided with access to the online support tool for use during the development or review of the service provider's Quality Improvement Plan (QIP). The tool is aimed at reviewing the nutrition and physical activity components of the QIP. For service providers who log in to the website, the website will have a tailored dashboard with visual and written summaries of their educator’s self-reflections and questionnaire performance, highlighting key priority areas related to Munch & Move practices. Service providers will also be able to pull these data to complete their required QIP with the option of utilising the tool’s Action Plan template, which was adapted from the Improvement Plan section of the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA) QIP template. As the regular process of developing or reviewing the QIP involves service providers obtaining information regarding their educator’s practices and performance, service providers will be required to share the tool with some of their educators. Educators who login to the tool will have access to additional features of the tool; the questionnaire, self-assessment reflections, and tailored educational resources. For educators who log in to the website, the tool will contain a self-assessment questionnaire which was developed based on the Munch & Move Monitoring Guide for Family Day Care Service Provider Practices and the Final Implementation Guide for Health Promotion Officers (HPOs) (both are internal documents from the Ministry of Health). The questionnaire will be designed to directly link with the relevant National Quality Standard and Munch & Move key messages, and each question given a rating out of 3 (0 = lowest score, 3 = highest score). After completion of the questionnaire, educators will be able to view their results and their performance based on the National Quality Standard and Munch & Move key messages. If an educator does not receive the highest rating (3/3) for a question, targeted educational resources will be provided. There will also be a self-assessment reflection component that aims to guide educators on critical reflection of practices. This feature of the website will assist in linking reflections directly to the National Quality Standard, and provide prompts to ensure a thorough and good quality reflection is written. This self-assessment feature can also be accessed immediately after completion of the questionnaire, which will allow the educator’s reflection to directly link with the results of the questionnaire. Recruitment of the study will run for a period of 6 months to coincide with the initial or annual review of QIP processes for many potential service providers and their registered educators. Each participating service provider and their educators will be asked to interact with the toolkit for a minimum of 4 weeks from when they receive access to the tool. This is to allow time for the service providers and educators to utilise the features of the tool and work on their QIP. Adherence to the intervention will be monitored via accessing web-portal analytics.