Parent group facilitators’ reflections on accessibility of in-person and videoconference meetings

During the COVID-19 pandemic, facilitators of preexisting parent groups (including support groups, parent education, and playgroups) quickly shifted meetings from in-person (IP) to videoconference (VC) format. This study explores facilitators’ perceptions of each meeting format’s affordances and/or constraints on accessibility. Such perspectives are pertinent as organizations decide how to provide services to families with young children, a population at higher risk for contagious viruses. Ten facilitators of parent groups for families of children prenatal to 5 years old engaged in one of four 90-minute VC focus groups to share experiences facilitating VC parent group meetings. Facilitators from organizations providing basic needs services saw IP meetings affording parents greater accessibility due to the interactions or services offered to recruit parents (e.g., providing meals, diapers, connection to resources, etc.). They felt that difficulties with virtual participation made VC parent group meetings less accessible for parents. Yet, other facilitators experienced in VC believed that VC meetings improved parent accessibility by eliminating travel and geographic barriers. They saw IP meetings as restrictive for parents with issues commuting, getting out of the house with their children or maintaining health and safety boundaries. For all facilitators, VC meetings were shorter, more frequent, and offered at a wider variety of times than IP, which some facilitators believed improved accessibility. No facilitators considered IP or VC meetings as the sole format to address all parents’ accessibility needs. These nuanced findings imply a need to identify both the subcomponents of accessibility to programming as well as the heterogeneous accessibility needs of participants and staff.