Category: News

The ICDP team of trainers, led by Zenona Gread, made good progress throughout 2020. 

The ICDP programme is being rolled out by Save the Children as part of their parenting package, which combines ICDP with cash transfer and budgeting schemes. This is facilitated through positive cooperation with the government. Seventy new facilitators and over 1500 families received ICDP training.

At a recent network meeting, parents talked about the positive changes in their lives as a result of their participation in the parenting programme, emphasizing better and warmer interactions with their children. The event was filmed and the footage included a song celebrating symbolically the importance of the ICDP interactive topics.

Read a short report from the ICDP trainers

The new research article about the Wawa Illari project in Peru is now freely available online.

It was published by Frontiers in Public Health, a multidisciplinary open-access journal which publishes rigorously peer-reviewed research and is at the forefront of disseminating scientific knowledge to researchers, academics, clinicians, policy makers and the public worldwide.

Follow the link below to find the published article: 

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.567900

The local team continued to train in the ICDP programme throughout 2020.

In the Nizhny Novgorod City and the Nizhny Novgorod region, the ICDP programme was introduced in schools and preschools, as well as to university students. 

ICDP training was given to ten groups, which included psychologists, teachers and specialists of non-profit organizations. In total 128 participants attended the workshops.

Read a short report from Oksana Isaeva.

On photo above: the 14 newly certified ICDP facilitators after receiving their certificates. 

Fourteen ICDP facilitators from Manyara region completed ICDP training in the autumn of 2020 by attending the final training from 17th to 19th of September. Their trainers were Verynice Frederick and Egla Matechi.

All fourteen facilitators held eight ICDP meetings with their respective groups of parents/caregivers and they all attended the final training workshop. At the workshop, they shared about their different experiences of working with parents, including any encountered difficulties. Some common challenges were identified, such as low participation of men and the participant parents’ difficulties in reaching the place of the meetings due to long distances.

Among other activities at the workshop, the sensitization principles were revised through role play. Some facilitators acted in role plays as parents and others as facilitators; it was an effective way of reviewing facilitators’ practical work.

The facilitators reported that they had observed positive changes in the parents’ relationship with their children and they showed a lot of interest and commitment to take ICDP to more parents/caregivers in their respective communities and at their working place. 

Two new parent groups have already started to receive ICDP.

There have been some important developments by ICDP in Bangladesh.

The year 2020 was a challenging year for ICDP in Bangladesh, as it was in many countries all over the world.

Read more in their report.

Two facilitators are now starting to implement the ICDP programme for the first time in Uzbekistan.

ICDP has established an agreement for training and cooperation with the Happy Start preschool in Tashkent. 

Happy Start is a learning centre for 2 to10 years old children and they offer pre-school education and after school activities. This is the link to their website: https://happystart.uz/. 

Since the summer of 2020, as part of the new developments at Happy Start, Shincon Uzbekistan is funding the introduction and implementation of the ICDP programme.

Magdalena Brännström and Valentina Ten have been receiving training online, through webinars with Nicoletta Armstrong and on the 14th of October 2020, they have started their ICDP practical task. The task consists of implementing the ICDP programme with the caregivers that are working at Happy Start. They will be holding weekly meetings together over several months in order to complete the full ICDP programme.

We wish you all the success!

The chair of the ICDP Finland Association describes the recent meeting.

“Our association hosted a zoom event for ICDP facilitators in Finland, on Tuesday, the 24^th of November. There are one hundred and forty-four facilitators in Finland, and twenty-nine facilitators from many corners of the country participated eagerly (plus a few cats and a dog) at the zoom event, sharing their ICDP experiences and inspiring each other.

We spoke of ways to practice sensitivity, playfulness and empathy with children, caregivers, differently abled people, colleagues and others, both when physically present and in remote setting.

Even though we would rather have met each other in real life, the ICDP magic was still tangible in this virtual meeting space”. – Pamela Antila.

Ten professionals are ready to receive their ICDP certificates having completed training at facilitator level.

Their training was carried out in the frame of an ongoing cooperation between the municipalities in Tapa and the Estonian Association of Central Norway. Six Estonians, two Russians and two Norwegians were trained by Grete Hyldmo and Hege Beate Sivertsen, two ICDP trainers from Trondheim, Norway. Grete Hyldmo explains: 

“I am very proud and happy to inform that the six professionals working in the schools in Tapa, Estonia have qualified for certification as ICDP facilitators. They participated actively in two training workshops held in Norway, in October 2019 and in January 2020. After the workshops they carried out their practical tasks conscientiously. They attended six full days of training and spent one day visiting two kindergartens and a primary school. They also had three days off for sightseeing Trondheim and its surroundings.

In January one of the themes was about cultural sensitization, violence and sexual abuse with a focus on the difficulties in their own society. According to ICDP obligations to the UN politics on the matters of sexual abuse and violence, they will arrange a day about these topics in Tapa, by a well-qualified, Estonian lecturer who knows the national legislations on these matters.

At the January workshop each participant presented a video of their own practice with children and analyzed it using the 8 guidelines of the ICDP programme. This was followed by their practical work in rolling out the programme to parent groups, which was successfully completed just before lock down in March. We visited them while they were still applying ICDP with groups of parents; we gathered the whole group in Tapa, for a day of support and reflections in the middle of February. In March, because of the corona virus pandemic, the second support session was held digitally and it was done together with our interpreter by talking to each person individually. To complete their training all participants wrote solid reports that contained reflections on their own practical work with parents, including descriptions of the use of exercises and their own application of the 7 principles of sensitization.

During the last week of August 2020, Tapa municipalities arranged an ICDP day for all the teachers. Many of the teachers had earlier participated as parents themselves in the ICDP parent groups that were conducted by trainee facilitators during the winter months and had thus been introduced to the ICDP programme. As a result of this good strategy quite a few teachers from different schools in Tapa now understand the ICDP programme from personal experience of attending parent groups. 

The ICDP facilitators look forward to receiving their certification at a graduation ceremony in Tapa. The director of Education in Tapa, Anne Roos, participated in the training and will also become an ICDP certified facilitator.  

The Tapa city council adopted the project and was kept informed all the way. The interpreter, Piret Purdelo Tomingas has not only helped with translations but has also had a central role in the project preparations and execution and the whole team has already started working on a new application for another training programme. I think they really have a unique possibility to make a difference in Tapa.”

ICDP programme in the services for people with intellectual disabilities in Finland.

ICDP Finland informs about an interesting adaptation of ICDP in which the programme was used to train adult caregivers of adults with intellectual disabilities:

Good interaction between professionals and people with intellectual disabilities is essential for achieving a person-centred service and in the long run it is fundamental in striving to reach an equal status for people with intellectual disabilities in society as a whole.

One of the first initiatives in Finland, where the ICDP programme was applied by professionals working with people with intellectual disabilities (ID), took place in the Swedish-speaking joint municipality Kårkulla in 2015. The programme was conducted in the Swedish language.

Kårkulla Joint Municipality is a service producer that provides counselling and service to Swedish-speaking persons with intellectual or other functional disabilities. The main objective is to offer continuous individual and family-centred rehabilitation and service in aid of their development and social involvement. The service is directed to children, families, young people, adults and seniors and is located in around 100 operating points in Swedish-speaking Finland. Currently Kårkulla has 4 facilitators trained in the ICDP programme.

The implementation was realized by having regional facilitators, who carry out ICDP groups for different professionals involved in the daily work: caregivers, instructors, therapists and unit managers. The programme was applied in orde to support and strengthen the interaction between professionals and persons with ID receiving services from the Swedish speaking joint municipality in Finland.

The start was challenging in different ways, because the programme had not yet been used widely among professional caregivers working with adults with ID. The tools and approach had to be adapted to fit in with the professional roles of caregivers working with adults, often in cases where the family had strong supportive ties to the person with ID. It was important for the ICDP facilitators to network and together create a basis for the intervention that would strengthen professional caregivers’ capacity to interact with adults with ID.

The goal was to enhance adults’ opportunities to be heard and seen as advocates of their own lives despite being in lifelong care.  This was achieved through supportive interaction. People with ID are sometimes only given the role of passive receiver, and therefore it is important to provide them with an opportunity to explore their adulthood and to encourage their independence. 

It was important for the facilitators to understand the different perspectives of the professional caregivers. The perspective is sometimes experienced as a balance between supporting independence and allowing for autonomy of the individual in their care. And at the same time trying to understand the caregiving dimension in the parent-relationship that is often strongly present in the lives of adults with ID. The professionals expressed the need to balance different interests. This discussion was given special attention in the groups. Discussion and exercises about redefinition were practiced by the groups. The image of the competent independent individual was strengthened and it was emphasized that autonomy can be expressed in different ways.

Professionals who attended ICDP groups expressed that the exercises and discussion enabled them to see interaction as fundamental to their work. Some also felt encouraged that they had the opportunity to discuss about different emotions and the importance of empathy during scheduled work.

Unfortunately, the continuing work with ICDP is weakened by the fact that no new facilitators are being trained, which means that in some regions of the joint municipality there are no ICDP groups available for professionals working with persons with ID. But the facilitators are confident that it will be possible to develop the work in the future. The experience of training  professional groups in ICDP will  help to incorporate ICDP in the services for persons with intellectual disabilities in the future.

The ICDP method is conceptualized as an intervention to be added to the Save the Children’s current Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) programme, in an effort to ensure better psychosocial development outcomes for children. It is expected for ICDP to become an integral part of the CSSP and to complement the existing economic interventions in the deprived communities in which Save the Children Nepal is currently working.

The objective of the new project is to train a group of 16 people in the ICDP programme and to continue with the training until they become ICDP approved facilitators. The group attended their first ICDP workshop in April and showed a lot of interest in the methodology. They are currently trying out the ICDP guidelines for good interaction in relation to their children, as a first step in training. The next step will be to enable them to deliver ICDP sessions to caregivers in three different communities at some distance from Kathmandu – that experience will also serve as a pilot project. The 16 participants are comprised of Save the Children staff members, as well as members of their implementing partner organizations.

“My visit to Kathmandu in April 2017 was an opportunity not only to start the training of a new group linked to Save the Children, but also to meet the previously trained ICDP team at the Early Childhood Education Centre (ECEC) and their leader Reiny de Wit, a person of great vision and talent. ICDP has been developing through ECEC for over two years in Kathmandu. ECEC has many years of experience in teacher training and their work is based on a philosophy close to ICDP’s, e.g.like ICDP they encourage and focus teachers to adapt and respond to the perceived needs of children. I spent several hours with the 14 trainee trainers at the ECEC who shared touching stories illustrating how ICDP had impacted positively the families they are working with. It was evident that they found ICDP to be a useful tool, as well as one they enjoyed using. ICDP trainers from the ECEC will now take over and continue the training of the Save the Children group. So this new training project represents a cooperation between ICDP, ECEC and Save the Children Nepal.” – Nicoletta Armstrong, ICDP.