Author: Nicoletta Armstrong

Update by Kimberly Svevo

Our newly named Best Start for Families (BSFF) Department is excited and highly motivated to have joined the social services agency Lutheran Child and Families Services-of Illinois one year ago (officially Nov. 2023).   We were eager to join this state-wide agency in order to share our Best Start (ICDP) Parenting / Parent Coaching Programs, our All About YOUth Programs and also our Professional and Community-Education Programs with LCFS client families and professional staff around the state.  In our first year with LCFS we may have quadrupled the number of parents we are serving from the previous year.  

The benefits of our programs to parents are transformative – increasing caregivers confidence, capacity, skills and knowledge – as well as their motivation to create protective relationships with their children, to help them thrive.  We are thrilled to find LCFS colleagues in every region who have stepped up to partner with us to deliver Best Start parenting programs to their client parents – birth, and more recently, foster parents too.  

The benefits of our LCFS staff training (of child welfare specialists and supervisors, as well as new clinicians) have been recognized and supported as providing new empathy and understanding of our clients.  We appreciate the strong support and encouragement of all staff state-wide to partner with BSFF to strengthen outcomes for client parents and children.

I. STATISTICS:  Total Birth Parent Referrals to BSFF July 2023-Oct 1, 2024.  Note: our programs for the Child Welfare families – parents are 14 weeks long and youth programs are 12-14 weeks long:   

• LCFS Child Welfare Total          247.            Direct DCFS Contract Total:        58
  • Grand Total 305, not including parents in partner programs.
• Completed Parent Groups:               92                         Direct DCFS Groups.     31
• Completed Parent Coaching:           12                          Direct DCFS Coaching.   9
• Of 247 finished or in groups currently 180                Direct DCFS (with continuing) 92

Recently, BSFF has expanded our work with Birth Parents to begin serving Foster Parents, and this work is showing strong results in supporting Foster Parents to succeed in improving their care of foster children, but also in qualifying for their re-certification.

We are also launching our first Best Start All About YOUth Programs in our new Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS) Community-based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) grant July/Oct. 2024-Sept 2025.

Finally, we will be working with Northwestern University in 2025 to prepare a new evaluation research initiative!  We will look forward to learning from and collaborating with ICDP colleagues internationally!

II.  PARTNER Grants

New and important grants received in the last 3-4 months:  

• DCFS Community-based CAP (CBCAP): 1 July 2024-30 Sept 2025.  This is a unique Prevention Project funded from final COVID monies, with an important emphasis on serving community-based families – parents and youth, who may be struggling but are not yet DCFS-involved.  The goal is provide parenting supports early, so these caregivers can succeed in strengthening their parenting so their children are never involved in the Child Welfare System.  We will serve a majority of universal population parents with this special grant.
• Dunham Foundation.  This is a first-time initiative by the Foundation to support D131 School District.  We were invited in to the project late and the District is piloting our afterschool Youth Leadership Project.

III.  The LCFS BSFF OFFICE will be moved in December 2024 to a larger space that we believe will serve as a model “Best Start Family Center” for LCFS!  More on this in our next report!

During 2024, UNICEF concluded a behavioural change study; the analysis of the data from the entry and exit questionnaires administered to participants of the ICDP “También Soy Persona” project for families with adolescents was conducted in coordination with Fundación EDUCO and CONAPINA in 2023 and it yielded the following results:

1. Caregivers found the workshops valuable and relevant to their role as mothers, fathers, and caregivers.

2. Participants highlighted positive changes in their relationship with adolescents after participating in the programme, such as more open communication and a reduction in family conflicts.

3. Some common obstacles to applying what was learned in the workshop were identified, such as forgetting to use the new skills in stressful situations.

4. Participants expressed interest in receiving additional support after the programme, either through regular follow-ups, support groups or additional resources.

Conclusion in general terms is that this methodology on parenting practices is useful and relevant for mothers, fathers or caregivers.

Liliana Reyes, UNICEF education officer

Click here to read about updates about ICDP activities in 2024.

2024 has been a busy year for ICDP Thailand.

This year began with our final module of facilitator training conducted by our two guest international trainers: Pitambar N. and Josien L. Our hope is to have all future trainings hosted and run by local trainers. The ICDP Thailand project is graciously hosted under the care of the Nexus Foundation with Ann Savinne S. as its Director.
We are extremely grateful for our trainers from Nepal and Holland and wish to extend a big thanks to ECEC Foundation in Nepal for coordinating and lending us their trainers over the past two years.

We hope to conclude our Trainer of Trainers modules in early 2025. This training will certify eight new trainers capable of training future facilitators. There are currently three Training of Facilitators in progress. Once concluded, our facilitator count will nearly double to almost seventy. In pairs, our facilitators in training are running approximately thirteen caregiver groups.

We are excited to see ways the ICDP program continues to connect parents, teachers, and social workers with children while impacting our ommunities for the better. Some of our more notable caregiver groups this year included a large pre-school located in downtown Chiang Mai. They required over 20 of their teachers to participate in our trainings and offered great feedback.

Additionally, KF Bangkok School opened its doors in August, and under an MOU with ICDP Thailand, was proud to have all of their staff ICDP certified. They have committed to ongoing partnerships for their staff, teachers, and parents so that all their students may be learning in a nurturing and caring environment with a multifaceted approach.

For more photos click here.

ICDP Finland has yet another busy year to look back at with trainings, meetings and efforts to make the ICDP programme sustainable in Finland. 

We received a great Midsummer present from the government sponsored ITLA Children’s Foundation. ITLA promotes early interventions for children and families in Finland and does systematic reviews to determine the effectiveness and implement ability of different methods and programmes. The review of ICDP in its Finnish context resulted in 4/5 points, which provides a good base for our future ICDP efforts.

In September we got to meet ICDP colleagues from around the world as ICDP trainers from Save the Children Finland met with us in Helsinki and we learned more about how the programme is promoted in different parts of the world.

In the picture above, from October 2024, you can see participants in our bi-annual Finnish trainer day, where we got to share lots of thoughts, experiences and laughter.

– Petra Zilliacus, ICDP Finland board member

Update, Caroline Wendel, November 2024

In recent years, the Jönköping Municipality, in collaboration with ICDP Sweden, has developed the ICDP programme for parents from other countries.

We have trained around 100 guides for Parents in a New Country. The idea is that all parents need to reflect on how they support their children to live within two cultures.

In addition, a research study on ICDP for Parents in a New Country is underway at Dalarna University. This research has now been expanded to include more municipalities.

Among other things, ICDP is now being incorporated into SFI (Swedish for Immigrants) teaching.

The picture above is from the central training for Guide for Parents in a New Country, which was held in Stockholm in September 2024.  

Update from the ICDP facilitators at the Ububele Educational and Psychotherapy Trust, who continue to train new groups of caregivers:

We have trained 25 parents in ICDP. Most of our parents live in Alexandra township, a low resourced community confronting a lot of socio-economic challenges including crime, drug abuse, unemployment, poor infrastructure to mention a few. Parents often share with us how these dynamics negatively affect their families, and make parenting more challenging than it would under normal circumstances.

Our ICDP groups consider the local context, using relatable role plays to encourage rich conversations and peer-to-peer learning. Here is some feedback from participants:

“I did not have a good relationship with my children. I did not know what is the best way to talk to them when I discipline them. Since I have been to Ububele, I am calm, and I talk to my children nicely. I can discipline them positively now. We even host meetings together and talk, something I did not know you can do with a child,” Mpho Moretsele, (mother).

“Unlike before, we talk to each other with smiles. We are calm when we communicate. I can see even the improvement at school, the results are much better than before,” Norah Malebye, (mother).

November 2024

ICDP in Ukraine had to go through a difficult period. Due to the war, many facilitators were forced to change their place of residence. Some facilitators left Ukraine for safer countries. Others moved to other cities or were forced to change jobs and activities. Due to this, connections with many facilitators were lost.

In 2024, we were engaged in restoring connections, collecting information about the place of residence of facilitators. By the summer, the register of facilitators was updated and a new coordination council was created that started to operate. Activities have been resumed in cities such as Kharkiv, Odessa, Kyiv, Poltava, Kramatorsk, Druzhkovka, Zaporizhzhia, Kryvyi Rih, Vinnytsia, and Dnipro. Two large training projects have been implemented.

On the volunteer initiative of ICDP Ukraine trainers, a group of facilitators was trained from July to October, including 26 participants from eight cities of Ukraine (Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Vinnytsia, Kryvyi Rih, Druzhkovka, Kamyanske, Zaporizhzhia) who completed the full training course and received facilitator level diplomas.

The second project was related to the training of facilitators for the International Charitable Foundation Caritas Ukraine. The training participants were 30 psychologists from crisis centres who work with children and specialists from Save the Children.

The new facilitators held parent groups in their cities. The group leaders noted that with the beginning of the war, there were more problems in families. Frequent experiences of stressful situations make adults emotionally closed and do not use positive emotions when communicating with their children. The principles of ICDP help to establish contact with children, to support them in the process of recovery and stabilization of their psycho-emotional state.

Facilitators who work for Save the Children note that children are unable to attend school regularly because of the war and experience frequent traumatic situations. Many witness their parents die, and experience separation from one or more caregivers, separation from brothers, sisters and other family members. Some children witnessed or participated in shocking events (for example, the release of brothers or sisters, relatives or neighbours from under the rubble after explosions).

The ICDP principles help to establish contact with children, to support them in the process of recovery and stabilization of their psycho-emotional states. Adults are also in an unstable psycho-emotional state. The seven principles of developing sensitivity in the program’s educators help to create trusting relationships within the group and launch work based on the principles of “peer to peer”.

 Facilitators from Ternopil, Serhiy Bukhvalov and MariaGavrishko, said: “Adults showed interest, recalled stories from their childhood, talked about their relationships with children, and actively shared their experiences regarding methods of communication with children”

Facilitators Igor Dashevsky, Svitlana Klunnik (Poltava), shared that their group included not only parents, but also grandmothers. “Questions helped to activate group work. Participants shared their experiences regarding the fact that children spend a lot of time on gadgets. During the exchange of experiences, adults recalled the games they played in childhood. There were many lively positive emotions”.

Natalia Kosenko Ulyana Kotsemira (Drohobych) used practical exercises and videos in their work. Adults shared their feelings about how close adults expressed their love for them in childhood.

Facilitator Marina Nechaeva (Kryvyi Rih) wrote: “The parents liked activities that involved interaction with each other, where they could talk about certain things about their lives. They also enjoyed the creative activity and individual work we did with them. It was interesting to watch how they shared their childhood memories, how much warmth they had and how others were filled with it. It was a little unexpected that some mothers burst into tears. After the tears, the condition of the participants began to stabilize”

Despite the difficult living conditions during the war, the trainers and facilitators of ICDP Ukraine continue their work and are planning to continue next year.

Rita Crecelius is an ICDP trainer and psychologist living in Germany, where she has been training groups of professional caregivers from several educational institutions. Rita describes her participation in an event that took place in Austria in the autumn 2024: 

The national conference of guidance counsellors took place from 10th to 12^th of October in the magical mountain landscape of Austria, in St. Wolfgang. Guidance counsellors support both teachers and students in challenging situations, in all types of schools. This means that they have excellent communication skills and know a lot about the developmental needs of children. Many speakers were invited to the conference who spoke about the topic of attachment from different perspectives.

My presentation of ICDP fit perfectly into the programme. I was able to report on the first study about the efficacy of ICDP in a school in Sweden (2021: https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2019.1705898).

Using the ICDP’s three dialogues for good interaction, I showed the common thread for successful cognitive development. The audience was particularly impressed by the brain scan of Romanian orphanage children, which clearly shows the effects of a lack of positive interaction (UNICEF, 2005).

Many of the participants in the conference were so curious about the ICDP programme that some have already registered for the ICDP workshop that I will be holding in Munich in February 2025.

I am very pleased that the ICDP spark is now also spreading to Austria.