Enhancing Connections Program in Improving Family Adjustment in Patients With Incurable Cancer

Inclusion Criteria:

PATIENTS

• Ages 25-65 years
• Have a diagnosis of incurable cancer of any type; at any time in the diagnosis as long as they have at least a 4 month life expectancy based on the opinion of the attending physician
• Read and write English among their languages of choice
• Parent must live at least 50% of the time in the home and have a child 5-17 years old living at home who has been told their parent's cancer diagnosis

CO-PARENTS

• Co-parents must reside with the consenting eligible cancer participant (and child) at least 50% of the time and be actively participating in the care of the child
• If a biological parent lives in the home, and is physically well themselves, this person must be the co-parent
• If a biological parent does not live in the home (or has died), the co-parent does not have to be a biological parent; therefore, co-parents may be step-parents, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual or transgender (LGBT) partners, grandparents, aunts, uncles, etc if they otherwise meet eligibility criteria
• He or she can read and write English among their languages of choice and agrees to attend the patient intervention sessions in person or by telephone

CHILDREN

• The patient and co-parent must agree to focus on the same child throughout the study and consent to have the child participate before the child's assent will be sought
• Children aged 5-13 years of age will participate with a waiver of assent
• Children aged 14-17 will assent to participate in the research study by signing a separate assent form
• Children of formal assenting age will be eligible to participate if they can read and write English among their languages of choice

ALL PARTICIPANTS

• Participants must live within 35 miles of the University of Washington, Seattle, WA to receive the in-person version of the intervention
• Parents and co-parents selecting the telephone version of the intervention may live any distance from the University of Washington

Exclusion Criteria:

• Patients will be excluded if they are enrolled in hospice at time of enrollment; however, they will be allowed to continue in the study if they enroll in hospice after beginning the study
• The triad will be ineligible if any member lives in the home less than 50% of the time
• If any member of the triad retracts consent or assent prior to completion of the post-intervention surveys, then all members will be excluded from the study thereafter
• The child will be excluded if he or she has learning challenges as assessed by the patient or co-parent; patients and co-parents will be instructed to consider any formal diagnoses of a learning disability of the presence of an Individual Education Plan (IEP) when making this assessment