FAmily Engagement Strategy for Coordinated Specialty Care

The overall goal of this mixed-methods, clustered stepped-wedged designed study is to examine the effectiveness of a family peer implemented in coordinated specialty care programs at engaging family members in services. The use of a family peer is anticipated to increase family member participant's feelings of connectedness, self-efficacy, and motivation which will in turn improve family member participants engagement in scheduled coordinated specialty care services such as family psychoeducation.

Recruitment will consist of dyads compromised of a family member support person and a corresponding individual receiving coordinated specialty care services. Recruitment will occur over two waves, the attention control condition (ACC) and the FAMES condition. The ACC will last for 18 months and will recruit 225 participant dyads during which time family member participants will be contacted weekly for 12 weeks where they will be provided with positively framed messaging, educational materials around psychosis, tips for addressing relevant concerns in areas such as communication and de-escalation, and a list of community-based and online resources and events. The FAMES condition will last for 30 months and will recruit 225 participant dyads during which time family member participants will receive a modified cultural formulation interview, brief check-ins, psychoeducation, and will have access to an online community.

Recruitment will take place at nine coordinated specialty care programs across four states (Washington, Oregon, Tennessee, and New Mexico) which have been randomized to a clustered stepped wedge program design.