Forming secure attachment relationships provides children with the best possible start to life. Children from families with high psychosocial vulnerability and complex mental health needs (eg, caregivers with lived experience of trauma, experiencing mental illness or substance abuse, current or past domestic violence, and/or current or a history of child protection issues) are at the greatest risk of experiencing attachment disturbances. Nurturing Connections is a new early intervention service launched by the New South Wales State Ministry of Health targeting both caregiver adversity and the caregiver-child attachment relationships in families with high psychosocial vulnerability and complex mental health needs. This paper outlines the evaluation protocol of the Nurturing Connections Programme.

A mixed-methods design will be used to undertake an implementation and outcomes evaluation. The study will draw on both qualitative and quantitative data, including routinely collected service data, surveys, participant observations, and semi-structured interview and yarning circle data. Appropriate descriptive and inferential techniques will be used to analyse quantitative data while thematic analysis will be drawn on to analyse qualitative data.

This research was approved by the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District Research Ethics Committee (2024/ETH01715). The Mid North Coast Local Health District also received ethics approval from the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council of New South Wales (2380/25). Evaluation findings will be shared via published manuscripts, conference presentations, as well as a final report to funding bodies.

Chronic pain is a common health condition that significantly impacts the quality of life of those affected, affecting one in five people in Canada. The prevalence of this condition tends to increase with age, making it a major health issue given the ageing population. However, its management remains inadequate and requires significant mobilisation of healthcare professionals as well as the development of multiple therapeutic solutions. Among these, non-pharmacological interventions such as hypnosis and virtual reality have proven effective. Nevertheless, while the existing literature seems promising, it presents methodological limitations. Therefore, this study aims to assess the effectiveness of an intervention combining virtual reality and hypnosis in an ageing population suffering from a widespread chronic pain condition, that is, hand arthritis.

This study will be a single-centre randomised clinical trial. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two conditions: one receiving an intervention combining virtual reality and hypnosis, and the other receiving only virtual reality. The effectiveness of the intervention on current perceived pain before and after the intervention (primary outcome) will be evaluated. Secondary outcomes will include anxiety and depressive symptoms, quality of life, relaxation and fatigue. Exploratory analyses will also be conducted to contribute to the emerging literature by examining physiological variables such as heart rate variability, respiratory rate and electrodermal activity during the intervention, and their relationship with primary and secondary outcomes.

The project was approved by the Research Ethical Committee of the Hospital Maisonneuve-Rosemont (Project no 2024-3539). Participants will be asked to provide written consent for their participation. Results from this study will be shared through peer-reviewed publications, as well as oral and poster presentations at scientific events. The protocol for this study was preregistered on Open Science Framework and raw anonymised data will be available on this platform (https://osf.io/vbh72/?view_only=1d17c5708f894faab6669d85e1fde75d).

NCT06833905.