Introduction
adversity
Strengthening financial security can buffer families from early adversity and enhance the environments that help children thrive.While the mechanisms are complex, it is understood that increased household income benefits children directly through better food, stable housing and healthcare (the investment model), as well as indirectly through improving parental mental health and thus parental capacity (the family stress model).Across many high-income countries, financial counselling services are freely available to help people overcome barriers to accessing entitlements and other financial supports, typically funded by governments. In Australia, however, services remain embedded in not-for-profit organisations and unconnected to the broader system.The current study, ‘Healthier Wealthier Families’ (HWF), sought to adapt the Scottish model to the Australian service context and evaluate the model via a pilot randomised controlled trial (RCT).