The Mental Health Foundation have developed an online mindfulness-based training programme called Be Mindful. Be Mindful has 10 easy-to-follow online sessions, featuring videos and interactive exercises, are presented by qualified mindfulness trainers, and the course can be completed in as little as 4 weeks (although most people take longer). Be Mindful helps people to look after their own emotional well-being.

We want to find out if Be Mindful helps family carers of people with learning disabilities (sometimes called intellectual or developmental disabilities) to look after their emotional well-being. To do this, we would need to run a large-scale Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). However, before we can do this, we need to run this feasibility study to ensure that the research design is feasible.

In the feasibility study, we have recruited parental caregivers of children and adults with intellectual disabilities who have been randomised to either receive the Be Mindful online intervention on its own, or to have Be Mindful alongside three telephone calls with Parent Mentors (who have children with intellectual disabilities). The overall aim of this feasibility study is to examine whether Be Mindful can be delivered successfully to parents of children or adults with intellectual disabilities, and whether it would be feasible to conduct a later definitive RCT of the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of Be Mindful. We will also generate initial evidence of whether the addition of co-produced guided support sessions leads to better outcomes for parents; informing the design of a definitive RCT.

We are in the final stages of data collection for this study, as of July 2019, and will update this page with the results when they are published.