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This qualitative study describes participants' experiences with a community-based family intervention. Guided by a positive psychology framework, the brief intervention was designed to enhance positive communication among family members using cooking and dining as a platform. Our interest was in understanding perceptions of benefits and barriers, with the intention of improving future development of communitybased family programs. Purposive sampling was used to recruit focus group participants from those who had participated in the family programs. Overall, 10 focus groups including 65 participants were conducted from April to July 2013. Thematic analysis of the focus groups suggested that the intervention was effective in promoting positive communication, increasing the use of age-appropriate parenting practices, and promoting quality family mealtime. These changes in turn led to perceived positive outcomes by our participants, including a sense of happiness and enhanced family relationship. Cultural and gender beliefs were identified as challenges and are important to consider for future family interventions. Time constraint was further highlighted as an important consideration both in the context of integrating skills into the family routine as well as a barrier to participation in family programs. Our findings add to the small but steadily increasing body of knowledge, especially from qualitative studies, on the effectiveness of brief family interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the development and evaluation of the train-the-trainer (TTT) workshop for lay resident leaders to be lay health promoters. The TTT workshop aimed to prepare the trainees to implement and/or assist in conducting a series of community-based family well-being activities for the residents in a public low rent housing estate, entitled “Learning Families Project”, under the FAMILY project. The four-hour TTT workshop was conducted for 32 trainees (72% women, 43% aged ≥ 60, 41% ≤ elementary school education). The workshop aimed to promote trainees’ knowledge, self-efficacy, attitude and practice of incorporating the positive psychology themes into their community activities and engaging the residents to join these activities and learn with their family members. Post-training support was provided. The effectiveness of the TTT was examined by self-administered questionnaires about trainees’ reactions to training content, changes in learning and practice at three time points (baseline, and immediately and one year after training), and the difference in residents’ survey results before and after participating in the community activities delivered by the trainees. The trainees’ learning about the general concepts of family well-being, learning family, leadership skills and planning skills increased significantly with medium to large effect sizes (Cohen’s d: 0.5–1.4) immediately after the training. The effects of perceived knowledge and attitude towards practice were sustained to one year (Cohen’s d: 0.4–0.6). The application of planning skills to implement community activities was higher at one year (Cohen’s d: 0.4), compared with baseline. At one year, the residents’ survey results showed significant increases in the practice of positive communication behaviours and better neighbour cohesions after joining the family well-being activities of LFP. Qualitative feedback supported the quantitative results. Our TTT workshop could serve as a practical example of development and evaluation of training programs for lay personnel to be lay health promoters. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]