The purpose of this rapid evidence review is to identify virtual and digital parenting interventions to build the evidence base supporting the effective delivery of Family Hubs and early years services in local areas and synthesising the existing evidence is the first step in this process. 

The aim of this review is to address the current gap in knowledge about virtual and digital delivery of interventions for families with a child between conception and age 5 that could be offered by Family Hubs within the 4 priority areas:   

1. Parenting support 
2. Parent–infant relationships and perinatal mental health 
3. Support for children’s early language and the home learning environment 
4. Infant feeding 

The review will be conducted by Cordis Bright through a desk-based synthesis of secondary data which involves analysing and integrating findings from various sources to develop a unified understanding or summary of the subject matter. Cordis Bright will conduct a narrative synthesis of both qualitative and quantitative findings. This will provide a basic descriptive summary of the studies and the results.  

The research questions for this review are as follows:  

1. To what extent do effective virtual and digital interventions corresponding with the 4 Family Hubs funded areas exist? 
2. What is the impact of these interventions on important child outcomes?  
3. What do we know about their differential impacts on different groups of families on the basis of sociodemographic factors such as age, race, gender, and socioeconomic status?  
4. What are the conditions for the success, or failure, of these interventions in practice? 
5. What is the acceptability/feasibility of these interventions for families in practice? 

The review will highlight differences between sociodemographic groups across all research questions. To select data based on predefined characteristics, a purposive sampling strategy will be used. Data extraction tables will capture information from 75 key articles, including title, date, study type, sample, mode of delivery, key findings, and evidence quality. 

To enhance ease of interpretation each article will be categorized based on its mode of delivery. A shorter list of the most relevant publications will be selected using the data extraction table for further review. These resources will be analysed and reported in relation to the research questions through a thematic analysis. Data extraction tables will be created to summarize the characteristics and findings of the studies. 

The anticipated timeline of the review is March 2023 to September 2023.