# Kidstime workshops: the evaluation of a multi-family intervention for children of parents with mental illness

## TL;DR

Kidstime workshops help children of parents with mental illness and their families by improving wellbeing and reducing distress through a low-cost, multi-family approach.

## Contribution

This study evaluates the effectiveness of Kidstime workshops as a novel multi-family intervention for children of parents with mental illness.

## Key findings

- Significant improvements in children’s distress and impairment were observed.
- Parental psychopathology and psychosocial functioning also improved.
- Workshops showed better resource-benefit ratio compared to general child support interventions.

## Abstract

Kidstime workshops were conceptualized as a low-threshold intervention for children of parents with mental illness (COPMI).

Kidstime workshops were set up at eleven locations throughout Germany. The multi-center eligibility study employed a pre-post-design. In addition to selected capability items, clinical scales were analyzed.

The preliminary results demonstrated significant improvements in the children’s distress and impairment as well as improvements in parental psychopathology and psychosocial functioning. There were also improvements in capability-based measures of psychological integrity and resilience, participation, life motivation and satisfaction in both children and parents. Our analysis suggests that Kidstime workshops can be more effective at improving capabilities, with better resource-benefit ratio compared with nationwide data of general child support interventions.

The preliminary results suggest that Kidstime workshops show therapeutic potential by improving wellbeing and participation for both COPMI and their parents. The Kidstime workshops address an important gap in support for COPMI by implementing a multi-family-based approach in the families’ social environment and providing cross-system delivery with low costs and few hours of investment.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00787-025-02853-z.