Caring for a child with club foot impact on family: A cross sectional study

Abstract

Background: Clubfoot is a treatable abnormality that can be managed with early interventions. Parental support is important for the compliance of the management and to achieve good outcome. Identifying and quantifying the family impact due to this condition is important when addressing the caregivers of these children. The aim of this study was to determine the financial, familial social impact, personal strain, and coping strategies of parents of a child with CTEV and explore any associated factors.
 Method: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out on 48 families presenting to the club foot clinic at Lady Ridgeway Hospital, Sri Lanka. A self-administered questionnaire with the Impact to Family Score and selected demographics was filled out by the selected participants.
 Results: Mean age of the children in the study sample was 21.4 months. 65.96% of the sample were families where only one parent was working and 64.6% of the total sample were living with extended families. The perceived mean total impact was 53.9 (SD=11.59) (range 34 to 78) and implying to be significantly lower than a USA study measuring impact for other chronic illnesses in children (M=48.03, SD=8.2, t(47)=3.53, p<0.01). Total impact in only one parent working (M=50.42, SD=9.80) implied to be significantly higher than both parents working (M=59.88, SD=12.51) t(45)=-2.87, p<0.01.
 Conclusion: Except for personal strain domain, all other domains of the family impact are perceived less when caring for a child with clubfoot than when caring for a child with chronic medical illness. Instances with only one working parent, and those living with extended family were identified to have a higher perceived impact when compared to their counterpart groups. Coping strategies of the parents were more favourable within nuclear families. This can be taken as a baseline study which demonstrates caregiver and family burden when caring for a child with club foot.