A trial of iLidcombe - an online treatment for children who stutter.

The Lidcombe program is a treatment for children who stutter and has clinical trials evidence (Brignell et al., 2020; Van Der Meulen & Pangalila, 2022). The Lidcombe Program is a behavioural treatment, administered by parents, under the guidance of a speech pathologist. For many children, treatment with the Lidcombe Program can resolve stuttering, and for others it can minimise stuttering significantly. Researchers at the Australian Stuttering Research Centre have developed an online version of the Lidcombe Program —iLidcombe. iLidcombe is designed to replicate the clinical process of treatment with the Lidcombe Program. The aim of the iLidcombe is to teach parents how to implement the Lidcombe Program treatment with their child at home, without seeing a speech pathologist. iLidcombe has parent training modules that include instructional voice overs delivered by an experienced speech pathologist, video training materials which provide treatment demonstrations, text on pages and downloadable resources. The program teaches parents how to identify and measure stuttering. Parents then learn how to implement the treatment with their child. iLidcombe has been designed to provide individualised feedback to parents based on the child’s progress during the treatment. Parents progress or unlock modules of the program based on their responses to questions throughout the program. The program provides an option for a parent to seek the services of a speech pathologist if they indicate in their responses that their child is not making progress, or the parent is having difficulty conducting the treatment. iLidcombe has seventeen training modules which take between 4 and 6 hours to complete. The parent is not required to complete all the modules in one sitting. Following completion of the training parents begin administering the treatment to their child. This typically involves 15 – 20 minutes per day where the parent and child sit together doing the activities recommended by the program. Parents then log into the program weekly to enter information about their child's progress and to receive treatment recommendations. The program is available to parents for a period of six months. They can log into the program any time that is convenient for them, but will be encouraged to log into the program regularly. The program has been designed for the parent and the child is not required to be present when the parent is engaging with the program. The purpose of this research is to conduct a Phase 1 study to determine the safety of iLidcombe and to see if parents comply with the program requirements over a six-month period. To assess safety, every week the parents will complete a 5-minute screening questionnaire, developed by researchers at the Australian Stuttering Research Centre. Based on the parent’s responses to this questionnaire, they may be asked to complete a standardised assessment, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL; Achenbach., 2011), that will take a minimum of 15 minutes up to a maximum of 60 minutes. To assess compliance, data from the iLidcombe will be extracted. This data includes the dates that a parent logs into the program and the parent responses to questions such information about the child's stuttering. The data will be extracted six months post commencement of the treatment, to determine parent compliance with iLidcombe recommendations.