“Healthy Start.” A National Strategy for Parents With Intellectual Disabilities and Their Children David McConnell*, Jan Matthews † , Gwynnyth Llewellyn ‡ , Robyn Mildon § , and Gabrielle Hindmarsh ‡ *University of Alberta, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, Department of Occupational Therapy, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; † Parenting Research Centre and Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology Melbourne, Victoria, Australia; ‡ University of Sydney, Faculty of Health Sciences, Australian Family and Disability Studies Research Collaboration, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia; and § Parenting Research Centre, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Abstract Parents with intellectual disabilities, like all other parents, need support with child rearing. Often this support comes from family and friends, but in the case of parents with intellectual disabilities, they are more likely to have to rely on the service system. Research from a number of countries demonstrates that there is limited system capacity to support these parents. There are few appropriate services, and practitioners are generally ill-equipped to meet the parents’ particular learning and support needs. In response, the Australian government has funded a capacity-building model known as Healthy Start: A national strategy for children of parents with intellectual disabilities, as part of its Stronger Families and Communities Strategy. This paper presents this model for building systems capacity that, in brief, addresses on the one hand, practitioner commitment, knowledge, and skills, and on the other, the parent education and community development resources needed to support parents with intellectual disability and promote a healthy start to life for their young children. The model involves the development of local leaders and practitioner networks in addition to dissemination of knowledge and innovation to support evidence-based practice. Innovative, cross-disciplinary, and inter-sectoral practitioner networks are at the heart of this capacity-building model. These networks bridge the gap between research knowledge and practitioner knowledge as a basis for planning and coordinating local service development. Keywords: intellectual disability, knowledge translation, parents, prevention, systems INTRODUCTION The foundation for health and well-being is laid down early in a child’s life (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000). Supporting parents during this critical period is widely regarded as the most effective means of promoting health and well-being in the developing child (UK Department of Health, 2000). This support is least likely to be available for those most vulnerable, such as parents with intellectual disabilities (McConnell, Llewellyn, & Ferronato, 2006). Typically, parents with intellectual disabilities receive limited social support from their family, friends, or the commu- nity. In this challenging situation, support from the service system may be critical to their children’s life chances. Health, education, and social services in many countries, however, have been shown to be poorly equipped to meet the particular learning and support needs of parents with intellectual disabilities. In this paper, we describe Healthy Start, a three-and-a-half- year funded quasi-experimental trial of a national strategy in Australia to build capacity in the community service system to support parents with intellectual disabilities. This project, funded by the Australian government under the Stronger Families and Communities Strategy of the Commonwealth Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, is the initiative of the Australian Supported Parenting Consor- tium, which is a community–university partnership dedicated to translating research knowledge into policy and practice. The con- sortium partners are the Parenting Research Centre (http:// www.parentingrc.org.au) and the University of Sydney-based Australian Family and Disability Studies Research Collaboration (http://www.afdsrc.org). An At-Risk Group of Parents and Children Children of parents with intellectual disabilities, as a group, are at risk for developmental delay and behavior disorders. Behavior–genetic studies show that general cognitive ability, typi- cally indexed by a total score on a standardized intelligence test (IQ), is approximately 50% heritable (Plomin, 1999; Simonoff, Bolton, & Rutter, 1996). Inherited risk is increased by poor preg- nancy and birth outcomes. A recent Australian prospective cohort study found that the odds of preeclampsia was 2.85 times higher for pregnant women with intellectual disabilities, and the odds of low birth weight and admission to neonatal intensive care were, Received September 17, 2007; accepted January 14, 2008 Correspondence: David McConnell, Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, 3-69 Corbett Hall, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6G 2G4. Tel: +1 780 492 7475; Fax: +1 780 492 4628; E-mail: david.mcconnell@ualberta.ca Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities Volume 5 Number 3 pp 194–202 September 2008 © 2008 International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disabilities and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.