Work looking at facilitation of, and barriers to, engagement of families in other child well-being services such as Sure Start may also hold valuable lessons for the child health programme.
The two facilitators who reported they would not facilitate RMT again indicated time commitment and compensation as barriers to facilitation.
Questions touched on areas such as common barriers faced, facilitation approaches that they used which resonated with practices, practice/provider level characteristics that they felt impacted practice engagement, motivational approaches, and effective modes of communication.
In a further step it might be useful to investigate more systematically which aspects are perceived as barriers and facilitations with regard to specific diagnoses.
The questions on barriers and facilitations, as well as on the professional role, consist of statements with a homogeneous item- and response format (five-point or six-point Likert scales; Figure 1).
Barriers and facilitations are focused from the paediatricians' perspective and are discussed critically in the light of findings described in recent publications originating in other countries, especially the UK and the USA.
The option to complete the predefined barriers and facilitations by free-text comments was rarely used, which might be an indication for a good coverage of the relevant aspects by the questions.
The objective of this study was to gain insight into the barriers that facilitators face during the facilitation process and to identify approaches used to overcome these barriers to help practices move towards positive change.
Two identified barriers for the current facilitation intervention were the facilitators' lack of health knowledge and the absence of financial support for MNHG members.
