Preventive parenting support

Description

Newly arrived parents bring with them competence and the ability to take care of themselves and their families, but they are vulnerable in the new context as an effect of the migration. To find their parent identity in a new society without knowing the language, understand the cultural codes or how the new society work, is not easy. Earlier studies show a wide spread fear among newly arrived groups that the social services would take care of their children. The need to offer parenting support efforts to newly arrived parents at different stages is therefore large and is prioritised in the government’s national strategy for a strengthened parenting support. The Parenting support will give contact and community, but also knowledge and support for families with migration experiences to be able to strengthen and culturally adapt their parental role in the new country as well as integrate into the new society.

The International Child Development Programme (ICDP) is a health promoting and preventative programme whose goal is to support and promote psychosocial care competence. The purpose with ICDP is to strengthen the parent’s interaction with their children by developing the parents’ reflective ability. By supporting and guiding parents, mental illness in the child may be prevented. The ICDP-programme is built on theories about modern infant psychology, attachment theory, affect psychology, object relation theory, and mediated learning. The programme is shaped from three dialogues around the child, the emotional dialogue, the meaning-making and expanding dialogue, as well as the regulatory and boundary-setting dialogue. Within these three dialogues there are eight interaction themes which through the caregiver will become aware of the positive interaction with the child.

In the research project parental support is integrated according to ICDP in SFI-education in some municipalities.

Using quantitative and qualitative methods, the following research questions are studied:

• Which effect does the ICDP-programme have on children’s and parents’ mental health, competence in parentship and social integration?
• Which are the parents’ experiences and levels of acceptance of the ICDP-programme
• Which contextual factors has eased or hindered the implementation of ICDP?
• What has worked and not worked with the implementation of ICDP, and for whom has it worked?