Aim 1: Recruitment, screening, completion, and retention rates
disability
RECRUITMENT
Participants were enrolled between September 2018 and January 2019. We faced challenges with recruitment, with the most common reasons reported by outreach team being: (i) lack of interest in psychosocial support with preference for financial or education support; (ii) difficulty attending due to adolescents’ work or school schedule. It was difficult to recruit participants from outside the existing War Child programmes, since a trusting relationship with these families was not built yet. Many Lebanese families declined participation due to the perception that the intervention predominantly targeted Syrians, illustrating tensions between the communities. In order to proceed with delivering interventions for those enrolled within one month from completing baseline, we conducted implementation of EASE groups in two waves, with the first groups commencing sessions while recruitment for the next groups took place.We registered 266 adolescents as interested in the study, of which only 154 (58%) completed screening assessments. At screening, 75 were eligible (49%), 77 were not eligible due to not meeting the cut-off on CPDS and 2 were not eligible due to disability. Of those eligible, 67 (89%) completed baseline, 35 were randomized to EASE and 32 were randomized to ETAU (see Fig. CONSORT Flow ChartOnly one family did not complete the ETAU home visit session (97% completed). Conversely, only 22 (63%) adolescents completed at least five sessions of EASE, which was specified as treatment completion, and only 15 (54%) of caregivers completed the three caregiver sessions. Attendance at total number of EASE sessions for adolescents and caregivers is illustrated in Fig. Attendance at EASE sessions for adolescents and caregivers