Author: Nicoletta Armstrong

The latest project by the ICDP Antioquia team of trainers, which has been planned with the Culture Secretariat of the Municipality of Medellín, was started in September and will end in December 2021. It involves the “Deambulantes” theatre company, whose artists are trained as ICDP facilitators.

The project consists of developing experimental laboratories for early childhood. These creation laboratories focus on “learning by creating” and seek to promote meaningful practices in child-adult interaction, by using different modalities of art and play (the body, sound, image, movement, literature, etc.) for cognitive, behavioural and emotional development in line with the ICDP programme.

This process is carried out in six areas, namely in the communes 2,9,14,16 and 80 (San Antonio de Prado district) and in the commune 90 (Santa Elena district). The project beneficiaries are the children who attend the Buen Comienzo preschools (the Good Start Programme) which is aimed at children aged between 3 and 5 years.

Each laboratory is attended by twenty (20) children, that is in total one hundred twenty (120) who will benefit from the project.

As a strategy, there are didactic materials, materials from the environment, organic elements, toys, recycling material. In addition, a backpack is used containing a booklet designed for the development of creative experiences of each child, including the topics and guidelines of the ICDP programme, as well as a puzzle game with the central message of each laboratory.

 At the same time, trainers will be working with the children’s parents introducing them to the programme with its eight guidelines for good interaction.

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The ICDP team in Antioquia has been sending encouraging messages to facilitators and parents all throughout the pandemic using various social networks. These positive ICDP messages reached a large number of families over the past months.

During the pandemic, ICDP has continued to be implemented in Russia, however this did not take place in person but in a distance format. We conducted ICDP training for the students specializing in Crisis Psychology at the Minin University, in Nizhny Novgorod, via the Zoom platform. And we were also able to use this platform to train groups of parents as well.

During the pandemic, we created and published a table game called Empathy, which helps to develop the emotional intelligence of children, parents, as well as specialists. The game is based on the model of emotional intelligence as an ability developed by D. Mayer, P. Salovey, D. Caruso and the model of emotions by R. Plutchik.

During the autumn of 2021, new face-to-face meetings with specialists and parent groups were started.

We have also prepared a new brochure with the main principles of the ICDP programme for our ICDP work in Russia.

Oksana Isaeva, ICDP Russia representative and trainer

On 16^th of September 2021, two education officers from UNICEF El Salvador, Marta Navarro and Marta Gomez, organized a virtual meeting with Nicoletta Armstrong, ICDP, in order to report and discuss about the progress of a pilot project, in which the ICDP programme is one of the key components. Another important topic addressed in this pilot is gender equality. This project, whose aim is to reduce violence against children received sponsorship from the EU and it represents cooperation with the Spotlight organization. It will end in December 2022.

Liliana Reyes from the Instituto Salvadoreño para el Desarrollo Integral de la Niñez y la Adolescencia – ISNA, (Salvadoran Institute for the Comprehensive Development of Children and Adolescents) also participated in the meeting. She reported that the implementation of the ICDP programme was executed by ICDP trainers and ICDP facilitators from ISNA and the NGO called EDUCO. ISNA has been working with ICDP for over ten years and in line with their policy all ISNA personnel receives ICDP training.

The municipalities in 3 areas covered by the pilot were prioritized on the basis of high levels of violence recorded in families and the community, exacerbated by gender issues concerning women and girls. The 3 areas are San Salvador, San Miguel and San Martin. The execution of the project plan took place in close communication with the local governments.

In the first phase of the project, ICDP was delivered to parents of adolescents and in the second, adolescents will facilitate the programme to other adolescents. The second phase is currently under preparation and will be starting in 2022.

Due to the pandemic, both the training and the roll out had to be modified to include virtual media. This proved to be a great learning. The ICDP trainers and ICDP facilitators received training in person as well as online – they would log on the new platform where all ICDP materials were presented in a didactic format to facilitate learning step by step. The new platform was prepared specifically for the training of trainers and facilitators, but not for the work with parents. Parents of adolescents attended the ICDP meetings in person and received follow up via WhatsApp and Zoom.

In 2021, the parents of adolescents who participated in the project were the same parents who had in previous years received the ICDP programme but at that time it was ICDP in the modality designed for parents of young children. This continuity of ICDP delivery was intentional as a long-term strategy. A special effort was made to involve both sexes in the project, which proved not to be an easy task.

The success of this pilot will be evaluated in its later stages, however, there are very positive signs already that it is working. Parents who never expressed loving feelings to their children, were now able to write warm letters to their children full of expressions of love and appreciation. Most parents said they did not know how to communicate with their children before ICDP and that the 3 dialogues have changed their lives. According to Liliana Reyes, the greatest impact on the lives of parents and their children came from the fact that in ICDP they had to apply and practice the 8 guidelines and then share with others their experiences – this practical aspect impacted the most.

The project met with technical difficulties such as difficult or no reception to talk using WhatsApp.

ICDP is going strong again at the Institute for Relational psychology. We had to postpone many courses during the time when we were badly affected by Corona virus pandemic. We tried to work on-line but we experienced more problems than opportunities. Therefore, we are now very glad, that in Denmark there no restrictions any longer, and that we can meet together in person in the autumn 2021. 

We had to postpone our Nordic conference several times and are now holding our breath that everything will take place as planned in November 2021 – https://icdp.dk/icdp-konference. Our Kee Note speaker is the American psychologist, Kenneth Gergen who will speak about the importance of relationships.

We are working with ICDP in different areas of Denmark. Currently, we are working in cooperation with the organization Save the Children in a project called “From Escape to Schooling”. We are educating Danish teachers in ICDP, and the aim is to include children of refugees into Danish Schools. 

Another great project is called “ICDP and Turning Tables” and in this project we are educating staff who are working in Turning Tables. Turning Tables is a global non-governmental organization working to empower marginalized youth in different global contexts by providing them with the means to process their challenges, hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow, through Creative Arts, music, and film. These projects are very good examples how we, in the Institute, are working for the mission of ICDP by reaching children, youth and families, and by aiming to provide for human care through activating empathy and by building caregivers’ competence.

– Annette  Groot, ICDP rep and trainer.

Therapy for parents found to cut diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder by two thirds.

Photos above: Parents in the study were given a five-month course aimed at improving the communication between them and their children. (ALAMY)

Article by Kat Lay, the Health Editor of the Times, issued on Monday September 20, 2021:

Giving therapy to the parents of babies showing potential signs of autism reduced the babies’ chance of going on to have the condition diagnosed by two thirds, according to a new study.

At age three, 6.7 per cent of children targeted by a five-month course aimed at improving communication between parents and their infants had autism spectrum disorder (ASD) diagnosed. In a comparable group who did not take part the figure was 20.5 per cent of children.

It is the first time that such an improvement has been shown worldwide and researchers said that it could have a “gobsmacking” impact.

Between 1 per cent and 2 per cent of people have autism so more than 10,000 infants a year in the UK could benefit.

The trial involved babies in Australia aged nine to fourteen months who were selected for inclusion because they were showing potential signs of autism such as differences in spontaneous eye contact, social gestures, imitation or how they responded to their name.

The research team was led by Professor Andrew Whitehouse of the University of Western Australia, and included Professor Jonathan Green of the University of Manchester. The treatment is known as iBASIS-VIPP.

Green said: “These findings are the first evidence that a pre-emptive intervention during infancy could lead to such a significant improvement in children’s social development that they then fell below the threshold for a clinical diagnosis of autism. Many therapies for autism have tried previously to replace developmental differences with more ‘typical’ behaviours. In contrast, iBASIS-VIPP works with each child’s unique differences and creates a social environment around the child that helps them learn in a way that was best for them.”

He emphasised that it was “not some miracle cure that makes them neurotypical” but said that it had improved the children’s social engagement and reduced stress in their lives. The study, published in JAMA Paediatrics, also demonstrated improvements in how the children interacted with others and a reduction in repetitive movements and unusual sensory interests.

The therapy involves videoing the children interacting with a parent. The parent then watches the video with a therapist who helps them to understand how the child might be communicating with them in atypical ways.

Green said: “The theory behind the intervention is how crucial these early caregiver-infant interactions are to brain and social development.” He said that differences in the brains of autistic children, present from infancy, could have a subtle effect on those early social interactions, leading to parents and babies getting “a bit out of sync”.

“This can lead parents to be highly perplexed by how to communicate, and understand their baby. And for the babies, they are getting less simple and useful feedback from parents because of that,” he said. “We think that these early social interaction difficulties can then cascade and amplify existing problems for the baby into an autistic trajectory.”

The researchers assessed 89 children at the start of the study, after the therapy period, and at ages two and three. The children who fell below the diagnostic threshold for autism still had developmental difficulties but the researchers said: “By working with each child’s unique differences, rather than trying to counter them, the therapy has effectively supported their development through the early childhood years.”

Use of the therapy by the NHS would require changes to how support to families with autistic children is provided. Many complain that they cannot access help without a formal diagnosis.

Whitehouse said that follow-up of study participants in later childhood, when the behaviours for autism may be more apparent, would be crucial to determining the longer-term significance of the video intervention.

He said, however, that he hoped that intervention during a time when the brain was rapidly developing “may lead to even greater impact on developmental outcomes in later childhood”.

Dr Marie Schaer, assistant professor at the Faculty of Psychiatry, University of Geneva, said intervening “before the onset of full-blown autism” would represent “a paradigm shift” in the field. “ASD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, often associated with increasingly deviant developmental trajectories as the child grows,” she said. “The increasing deviance from typical development explains why it is often easier to diagnose autism in children older than three, when the signs are more prominent. But it also explains why, if we intervene as early as possible when autism is diagnosed, we can most efficiently narrow the gap.”

Tim Nicholls, head of policy, public affairs and research partnerships at the National Autistic Society, said that some autistic people and their families might be concerned at the suggestion that the intervention could have an impact on “autism behaviour severity”. He said: “Autism is not a disease and not something that should be cured or lessened.”

On the 16 of August 2021, ICDP trainer Luis Fernando started to conduct virtual and face-to-face trainings with 3 different groups of professionals who are all linked to the Secretariat of Health.  The purpose of the training is to strengthen and follow up facilitators who have been delivering the ICDP programme to families in all of the 123 municipalities of the department. The roll out of the ICDP programme is supported by Martin Barrera, the Secretary of Health. Most of the participants of the recent trainings are psychologists.

Background

Since 2004, ICDP has been present in the Department of Boyacá, where the ICDP programme was initially implemented as part of a wider peace promoting strategy by UNICEF. When the Governor of the Boyacá department launched the project, he said that ICDP represented an important contribution towards the future development of the Colombian society and that ICDP was officially adopted as a long-term strategy. In 2008, the Colombian national award for human rights was given to the Boyacá department for their work with ICDP, the programme had  at that time reached 50 000 families.