Category: News

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.

2022 has been a year when the board in ICDP Sweden has changed chair, and Annelie Waldau Bergman, who has done such a competent and brilliant job as chair for more than 20 years, since the start in Sweden, has given that place to Veronica Kindbom who took over in June 2002.  We are all so thankful to Annelie for her most competent, sensitive and dedicated work for ICDP and for children for so many years!

The ICDP work in Sweden has during 2022 slowly picked up from where it was before the pandemic. The trainings have started up with physical presence again, though the trainer level education is still using both digital and physical meetings with good results. In November we arranged the yearly meeting with our facilitators digitally , so as many as possible could participate.  Our trainers all over Sweden have been very active and done a great job in educating over 100 new facilitators and over 300 caregivers. During the spring 12 new facilitators finished their education and another 17 started their facilitator education during 2022.

The work on our homepage has been progressing, and the board decided to invest in a completely new homepage that hopefully will be ready during the spring 2023. The work on closer cooperation with our facilitators is still going on.

Together with a facilitator in the city of Jönköping, and of course inspired by the work in Norway., Stiftelsen ICDP Sweden adapted the programme to better fit in with our new inhabitants, parents from other countries. A fifth day of education for our trainers will be offered during spring 2023. The education will give some extra tools to our trainers to meet the parents arriving to a new country in a sensitive and more profound way. We are really looking forward to this!

During 2022 we have also invested a great deal of effort in making new booklets. The work with the new booklet ”Praktisk tillämpning av barnkonventionen” (”Practical application of the Convention on the Rights of the Child”) was finished during the autumn of 2022 and it was presented at our yearly meeting with facilitators in November. The booklet is now used in all our trainings. In 2022 the process of making a couple of more booklets had started and these will hopefully be ready in 2023.

ICDP Sweden is in an inspiring and developing phase, and we are really looking forward to 2023!

Veronica Kindbom

Sergey and Anna Krasin wrote in February 2023:

2022 was very difficult year for Ukraine and very difficult for ICDP Ukraine.
Trainers and facilitators found themselves working under constant stress, with many being forced to leave their homes, and some had little option but to leave the country. Nevertheless, ICDP trainers and facilitators continued conducting sessions for parents whenever it was possible for them to do so.

A new challenge for us was the need to support parents who experienced traumatic situations with serious emotional consequences. At the same time, the facilitators had to cope with traumas they themselves lived through.

On 23-24^th of July, together with the Changing Children’s Worlds Foundation (ICDP USA) we conducted a shared Ukrainian-American conference called “Practical aspects of providing psycho-social support to parents and children using ICDP methods: the experience of America and Ukraine” bit.ly/us-ua-icdp
More than 70 participants took part in master classes prepared by specialists from America and Ukraine (Kimberly Svevo-Ciancsi, Diana McFarlin, Ksenia Kozlova, Anna Krasina, Sergey Krasin, Natalia Fedak).

In November and December, trainers Anna and Sergey Krasin conducted a training module for 30 specialists from Child Friendly Spaces (CFS) run by the Caritas Ukraine Charitable Foundation.

CFS represent a safe place where children can meet other children to play, learn to cope with the risks they must face on daily basis, participate in some educational activities and relax. They are located on the premises of Caritas in different Ukrainian cities. In addition, mobile child friendly spaces are organized in areas with large numbers of newly displaced population, including internally displaced persons, especially children in need of assistance (children in shelters, community centres, tents or in open spaces in a camp or community).

Nine participants of the training project for specialist working in CFS became facilitators.

Zotina Sofiia, who conducts parent groups in Lviv, notes that during the war, adults became more closed, it was difficult for them to open up and talk about their feelings. In groups, parents willingly share memories of their childhood and their positive parental experience.

Demkovich Zoryana, who runs groups in Zhovkva, Lviv region, says that adults attending groups have been learning to feel happy again.

Story from Zoryana: “During our meeting, some parents sincerely shared their experiences and anxieties. Such stories left everyone touched and in tears. Others also started sharing their thoughts about very personal experiences. For example, one mother told us about her lack of knowledge and skills in raising her son, which led to their misunderstanding each other. She shared that she now understood her own misconceptions, imagining that her son was the way she wanted him to be. She rarely listened to his opinion, which, as a result, led him to rebel and decreased his willingness to study.”

Elena Kubik from Nikolaev said that the parent groups are very emotional. Closed adults begin to open up and openly talk about their memories from their own childhood. They feel much better afterwards and start to change their attitude towards their children. They are very grateful for the ICDP groups and as a result they tend to offer more reliable support to their children during these difficult times.

Lesya Kupchik from Khmelnitsky notes that the war created more conflicts between children and parents. In groups, based on the ICDP principles, together they are looking for ways out of different conflicting situations.

In Kyiv, Diana Diatchenko, conducted parents’ groups and also groups for parents together with their children. She noted that at the first meetings, the parents were very constrained and did not show emotions. Then, adults became friends, and at the end, they did not want to leave. Children and adults enjoyed working together very much.

In the village of Oleksandrivka, in the Dnepropetrovsk region, Nesvitskaya Julia and Kravchenko Alena noticed that conducting parent-child and parent groups help adults look at their children differently, change their attitude towards their children and reduce conflicts in the family.

Parent groups, conducted by ICDP facilitators at the locations of the CFS Caritas of Ukraine, were visited by more than 70 parents who suffered from the war in Ukraine.

In February 2023, three face-to-face training groups for ICDP facilitators started in Dnipro, Kharkiv and Poltava. 

During the past few years, Save the Children (SC) has been applying the ICDP programme through a parenting package developed for implementation at community level in Napel. In this package, ICDP was added to the Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) project, which untill then had focused mainly on the child grant.

Currently, there are 5 national trainers in the SC organization and their task has been to train and form ICDP facilitators who operate under local governments. During 2022, a group of 99 new facilitators were formed who reached 478 caregivers, mostly mothers.

Key achievements in 2022:

Local governments in the project areas are allocating budgets to implement and collaborate on the parenting programme. Currently, the parenting package is being implemented by nine local governments in four districts. Four local governments out of nine, have allocated budgets already and others are in the process of doing so. This development is resulting from them realizing the importance of the programme.

Policy influence: Department of National ID and Civil Registration under the ministry of Home Affairs in Nepal, formed a committee to prepare draft guideline on the parenting programme operation in all of its 753 local governments. The committee submitted the final draft to the department after a process of consultation through a series of meetings, in which two members of staff from the CSSP project participated and were part of that committee. The guideline was eventually endorsed by the department.

ICDP facilitators conducted training in four districts. All the facilitators were selected from local governments based on the criteria set by the project. SC, considering a sustainable approach, engaged the local governments in the process so that future local governments can take over and run the parenting sessions.

Impact evaluation study of the child grant plus parenting programme: An impact study was carried out in 2021, which was disseminated among the governments and other development stakeholders. The finding showed positive impacts (Impact Evaluation of the Child Grant Parenting Programme in Nepal | Save the Children’s Resource Centre)

Click here to read the ICDP report by Save the Children in Nepal.

Photo: ICDP facilitators in Gabane village

The Ark and Mark Trust has been a beneficiary of the Department of Social Protection (DSP) through the funding received to reach out to more localities in Botswana as parenting continues to be a challenge across the country.

Following the facilitators training in Ramotswa village in February 2022, new facilitators were trained in Gabane and Molepolole villages respectively, through funding from DSP. This brings the implementation of ICDP to a total of 4 villages in Botswana: Ramotswa, Gabane, Molepolole and Thamaga.. There are 50 new ICDP facilitators (40 female and 10 male) and 470 parents and 2012 children were reached with the ICDP programme.

Facilitators appreciated ICDP during training as they experienced their own transformation and witnessed it in their   fellow facilitators and families as well. One facilitator shared how she used to be strict and was known in the neighbourhood for such, and her children even named her “pit bull”. She has changed, and the community and other facilitators attested to it. Some of her neighbours expressed positive shock by the deep transformation they witnessed in her. This facilitator now finds it easy to reach out to difficult children in her neighbourhood, and enjoys imparting knowledge to parents.

To read the ICDP report by the Ark and Mark Trust click here.

Report by Sajeda Boby, ICDP Bangladesh trainer

It has been a joy to run ICDP training in Bangladesh through the Healthy Childhood Development Programme (HCDP), a project of Normisjon Bangladesh. The testimonies of caregivers and facilitators motivate us to work.

Facilitator level training

In 2022, we were able to train 44 new facilitators. Because of COVID-19 we could not start our training in Dhaka on time. However, we were able to complete the training of 4 batches of facilitators in two locations, namely in Dhaka and Dinajpur. In addition, two candidates completed their training and became ICDP trainers. 

Gatherings for facilitators

Another important activity was to organize meetings in different locations: there were 3 regional and 2 annual facilitator gatherings. In these gatherings we gave out updated materials to the facilitators and encouraged them to run caregiver groups. As a result, facilitators became motivated to run new caregiver groups.

Caregiver level training

In total 45 caregiver groups operated in 2022.

Additional four caregiver groups were started in 2022 and will continue in 2023. In addition to the previously trained facilitators, the new facilitators also ran caregiver groups. In total 293 caregivers received ICDP training and 799 children were touched by this training. 

We work with different partner organizations who offer services to low-income families. We frequently meet with the leaders of our partner organizations and we discuss together about the progress of the ICDP training. They give us their valuable suggestions. Currently we have seven partners. All the partner organizations have certified facilitators who run caregiver groups among their beneficiaries. 

New materials

We produced many new photos related to ICDP content and we made short video clips illustrating the eight ICDP guidelines for good interaction. These photos and videos will be used in the communities where people are illiterate. We also made a video in the Bengali language. The video was made to reflect Bengali cultural context and our local Bengali family was cast on the video.

Nasima’s story

Nasima (26) lives and is employed as a seamstress at a women’s centre in Dhaka, Basha. She was rescued from human trafficking. She has two children; a schoolgirl and a baby boy.

Although the three were rescued from the streets, they were still trapped in a cycle of violence. But then Nasima joined an ICDP caregiver group.

Nasima used to beat her children. Beating children came naturally to Nasima. Because she herself grew up like this, like most children in Bangladesh. As an adult, she had lived through many experiences that made it difficult for her act in a positive way towards her children.

“In the past, my children were of no value to me, and I could not take good care of them, says Nasima. Everything changed after this course. I began to see I was wrong and realized that my children’s value. I started helping my daughter with her homework. Now when my daughter wants something, I can’t afford, I explain why I can’t give it to her, instead of hitting her, like I used to do.”