Category: News

As part of their development activities and to respond to the thorny issue of difficult relationships between children and their parents, the Evangelical and Lutheran Mission in the Ivory Coast and the Norwegian Protestant Mission (MPN) in Senegal, initiated a training of their partners on the International Child Development Program (ICDP) approach.

This training took place, in its first phase, from February 27 to March 3, in Kédougou, in the south-east of Senegal and with participants from both countries.

The second session, which certified participants as ICDP facilitators, took place in Abidjan, in the Ivory Coast, on September 4, 5, 6 and 7, 2023.

Click here to read the full report in English, from the second workshop. Click here to read the report in French.

The ICDP Nordic conference took place on 21st and 22nd of September 2023. Report from Merethe Kvernroed:

There were close to 200 participants – mainly from Norway – but quite a few also from our neighboring countries Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Day one was mandatory for trainers in Norway and day 2 was optional. Still, many joined Day 2 as well.

The theme of the conference, “Building robust and resilient relations”, appeared to be one of great interest to many participants. Interestingly, there is a fair amount of public debate around these questions in Norway at present.

We had two keynote speakers who addressed this theme, also with slightly provocative concepts, such as “helicopter parenting” (term used by Line Warholm, a psychologist and writer) and the role of optimal frustration for healthy development  (discussed by psychologist Zemir Popovac, who came to Norway from Bosnia when he was 18 years old).  The combination of these two speakers was very interesting, because Line Warholm stirred the waters, while Zemir Popovac provided some very interesting tools.

Participants had the opportunity to walk and talk on the same theme, including a fun task of creating a photo to illustrate core discussions. The photos were shown as a movie in the plenary session on the following morning.

There were two discussion panels; one on questions relating to universal preventative programming for parents and on the following day there were lively discussions on implementation. After lunch there were mini-workshops that worked on providing practical examples of implementation by sharing experiences from various settings such as: refugees and integration; ICDP for parents in prisons; ICDP implemented in the care of the elderly in Oslo; ICDP in schools (Denmark) and presentations from ICDP Sweden and Finland.

Participants were very satisfied with the content of the conference and felt the various discussions were useful and inspirational for their future work with ICDP.

Here is the link to some of the photos from the conference:

Nordisk ICDP Konferanse 2023 – Robuste relasjoner – ICDP Norge

As always for me it is my pleasure to share with the ICDP network that this year (2023), together with the Health Secretariat of Boyacá and the ESE Rehabilitation Centre of Boyacá, we completed the training of a new group of professionals.

Twenty-seven psychologists of the Boyacá department received their ICDP certificates as facilitators of the ICDP programme “Tambien soy Persona” (“I am also a person”).

Our enthusiasm for the programme and its implementation all over our department is not waning!

Luis Fernando Lopez Cardozo, Boyacá, July 2023.

On this warm late summer’s day here in Pargas, Finland, we are happy to announce 19 new graduates of ICDP basic training (on photo above).

In this group, with professionals from health care and social care working in early childhood education and schools, we have especially discussed the position and perspective of the child. Many deep thoughts and good laughs have accompanied us through the days!

The group was taught by early childhood special education teacher Christel Holmström and family counselling clinical psychologist Petra Zilliacus.

August 2023

Based on the report by Atnaf Berhanu:

Atnaf was in Ethiopia from January to the end of March 2023. During this period, she conducted 3 workshops to create awareness about the ICDP programme and in addition, she held 3 training workshops to form new ICDP facilitators. These workshops were all held in different parts of the country. It was a great effort, particularly as Atnaf continues to expand her work with the ICDP programme on voluntary basis. Despite the lack of financial support, Atnaf is determined to continue because she feels that ICDP is important.

A total of 180 church leaders attended the awareness raising workshops. This effort was very successful and the church leaders decided to have groups of facilitators formed in all 3 areas, as follows:

Shashemene, West Arsi Zone, Oromia Region, 250 km from Addis Abeba

Facilitator level training was given to 22 members of different local churches. There after the trained facilitators recruited parents and ran parent groups. Atnaf provided a support session to this team.

Wolayta Sodo, Southwest of Ethiopia

A group of 55 Church leaders were introduced to the ICDP principles, who found ICDP to be relevant to their congregations and afterwards asked for ICDP training to be conducted for new groups of facilitators; 33 members of different local churches attended the training – part one was accomplished in February and part two in March. Some of the facilitators started to run parent groups immediately after the training. 

Debreberhan, about 120 km northeast of Addis Ababa

A total of 45 church leaders asked for ICDP training to be given to 22 members of their congregations. Part one of the training was given in February, and part two in March. During the training the participants shared their experiences on how they tend to treat their children due to lack of knowledge. After the training some of them said that they asked forgiveness from their children for the way they behaved before receiving ICDP. 

Continuation of the work in Hawasa

In Hawasa, a group of previously trained ICDP facilitators have been giving parental guidance to families in their congregations. One local church carried out an evaluation with a group of 31 parents after they attended ICDP. The evaluation was based on the following questions and with following results: 

Have they benefited from the training: all benefited very much, 1 to some extent. 

About the impact of the intervention: 24 answered it was very good; 6 said it was medium.

Was there anything they did not understand: 24 said all was clear, 7 said it was clear to some extent.

Asked if they will share ICDP with others: 21 said they will share it with others; 9 said they hope to share it with others.

With pleasure we share the ICDP report about activities in 2022.

Professional caregivers’ participation in the International Caregiver Development Programme: A qualitative study of psychosocial care in nursing homes
Line Constance Holmsen | Bodil Tveit | Ane-Marthe Solheim Skar|Marit Helene Hem

Read it here in full.

Abstract
Aim: This paper aims to explore professional caregivers’ experiences of psychosocial care for older persons living in nursing homes following the professional caregivers’ participation in the International Caregiver Development Programme (ICDP).
Design: A qualitative study.
Methods: About 15 focus group interviews and 25 participatory observations of five ICDP group courses were conducted with 31 employees in nursing homes, including registered nurses, enrolled nurses and nursing aids. The findings emerged through hermeneutic analysis.
Results: Main findings: (i) Adjusting the communication to the residents’ psychosocial needs, (ii) Seeing the residents as individuals and (iii) Adjusting to individual interaction with the residents. The professional caregivers experienced that the residents participated more in communication, interaction and activities, in addition to be more satisfied, calm, happy and thankful in interaction with the caregivers. Furthermore, they described that the environment in the units became calmer and that they were considering psychosocial care before medication. Work-related stress seems to impact ICDP participation and may be a barrier to implementation.

Post-intervention assessment of the work in Dungarpur:

During February 2022, ICDP parenting sessions were conducted with 128 caregivers and life skills sessions with 177 children. After these sessions, a post-intervention assessment was conducted with caregivers and children through the globally validated tools on the social emotional learning in children and the behaviour of caregivers towards their children. An evaluation study consisting of pre and post intervention assessment exercises was carried out for treatment and control groups in 2022, over a period of 13 months, to observe the impact of the parenting and life skills sessions on the caregivers and children. The study revealed that the children’s social-emotional learning (SEL) skills (measured on empathy, relationships, stress management, perseverance, and self-concept domains) improved for the treatment group. Caregivers’ interactions with their children also became more empathic and encouraging, with a decrease in maltreatment practices and increase in positive engagement in the treatment group. On the other hand, children in the control group did not show the same improvement in SEL skills. The average caregiver engagement score reported by the children shows a significant increase from 1.71 to 3.04 in a scale of 1 to 5 points, which is a clear predictor of change in the behaviour of caregivers towards their children. In the study, the various forms of maltreatment were grouped in four sub-domains: non-violent discipline, psychological aggression, physical violence, and neglect. It was observed that psychological aggression (shouting, threatening, giving insulting remarks) which was used by caregivers to control their child’s behaviour was reduced during the post-intervention assessment. The average psychological aggression reported by children in the pre-intervention assessment (baseline) to post-intervention assessment (endline) shows a clear decrease, which went down from 1.75 to 0.6. The physical violence measures (such as hitting, spanking, slapping) used by the caregivers also showed significant decrease, which declined from 1.21 to 0.15. To measure the children’s social-emotional learning skills, the International Social Emotional Learning Assessment (ISELA) tool was used that covered five social-emotional learning competencies: relationships: use of social supports, self-concept, stress management, perseverance, empathy and conflict resolution.

To all our partners working with the ICDP programme we recommend the following publication:

“WHO guidelines on parenting interventions to prevent maltreatment and enhance parent–child relationships with children aged 0–17 years”

It can be downloaded by following this link:

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240065505

Overview

This guideline provides evidence-based recommendations on parenting interventions for parents and caregivers of children aged 0–17 years that are designed to reduce child maltreatment and harsh parenting, enhance the parent–child relationship, and prevent poor mental health among parents and emotional and behavioural problems among children.

Normisjon is the organization promoting the start of ICDP in Senegal. At the same time, in the Ivory Coast, the Norwegian Lutheran Mission (NLM) together with its local partner, the Mission Evangelique Lutherienne en Cote d’Ivoire (MELCI), has also been making efforts to start ICDP. The two organizations contacted the ICDP foundation and it was agreed to start the training of future ICDP facilitators from both countries. at a workshop in Senegal. The first training workshop in the ICDP progrmme took place in March 2023, and it was conducted by ICDP trainer, Aubin Sanou. Aubin has been implementing the programme in Burkina Faso for a few years now and he had previously been trained by Nicoletta Armstrong. Read his brief report.