Targeting Child Mental Health and Household Poverty

Living in poverty has long-lasting negative effects on children's mental health and on their mental health in adulthood. Child poverty is very common, affecting 17% of Canadian children. Many low income families may not be getting all the social benefits they are entitled to receive. Increasingly, there are calls for primary care providers to ask all patients about poverty and to intervene if poverty is identified. However, it is not known if an intervention can improve children's health. This study will test the effect of having a Community Support Worker work with families of children age 2-5 years during a primary care visit to identify unmet financially related social needs (like food, housing or energy insecurity) and help families navigate the social service system. The Community Support Worker will help families complete income tax, apply for benefits and community supports to which they are entitled. The investigators will study the effect on child emotional and behavioural health, parent stress and depression and family income. Results from this study will help health care providers and policy makers understand whether this is an effective way to integrate the health and social service systems to improve child and parent health.