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Update about ICDP work by Rita Crecelius, ICDP trainer, October 2021

During 2021, ICDP became known to more day-cares in Germany.

• In June, 18 members of the day-care team responsible for 88 children at the St. Thomas day-care, completed their ICDP caregiver training. They were proud to be the first day-care team in Germany to hold an ICDP certificate.

According to their leader Ana Vázquez-Zimmermann all team members reported that ICDP has been continuously enriching their everyday life. Some noticed that the crib familiarization was much more relaxed this year. Most colleagues think that the “view of the child” has become more natural and that they themselves no longer come under so much pressure in certain challenging situations.

Ana said: “We were also able to advance team development with the help of the ICDP guidelines. ICDP should be our second bible!”

• In November 2021, I will conduct the first refresher course for the team at the St. Thomas day-care. The day-care belongs to “Kirchenkreis Hildesheim-Sarstedt”. This company is a provider of 22 day-cares in total and their interest in ICDP is growing there.

• In May 2021, Impuls Soziales Management, provider of 40 day-cares all over Germany, started an ICDP pilot project in their “Kinderhaus Frech Daxe” day-care. This day-care has 50 team members in charge of 176 children, whose parents are working at VW Financial Services in Braunschweig. Two out of five groups of their day-care workers have already received their caregiver ICDP certificates. The pilot will be completed in January 2022. The feedback has so far been very positive. One of the day-care workers said: “It is incredible, how quickly and effortlessly are things changing for the better thanks to ICDP”.

• In September 2021, I presented ICDP at a school for children with special needs and as a result, we are now planning a trial ICDP workshop for teachers.

• I have previously conducted an ICDP course for caregivers of older people, which aroused a lot of interest in ICDP. This year I plan to hold another such course in November 2021, in Hameln – there have been quite a few registrations for it.

• I was also approached to give a presentation about ICDP by a team from the Caritas Forum Demenz organization. They are specialists in geriatric psychiatry and organize training for carers of older people and people with dementia, in the Region of Hannover.

• Bunte Gruppe is a free, non-institutional body providing training for carers from different fields. In July 2021, I completed the training of 6 carers, Bunte Gruppe 3. I have also been training Bunte Gruppe 4, consisting of 7 carers, including two from Austria – their training will be completed in November 2021. This is my first ICDP hybrid-training: Four of the participants attend the workshop in person, whereas the other three are online and appear on the screen – so this is my first ICDP “hybrid training”. The whole group is interacting well, participants are building bridges between the virtual and the real world – this is an interesting experience in itself!

The technical equipment for this kind of “hybrid workshops” is facilitated by a network of creative professionals called KreHtiv, in the region of Hannover. In spring 2021, they started a “Fond for Digitization” to which I applied; I was successful and received a financial contribution thanks to which I was able to establish ICDP online events in a professional way. This has enabled me to reach more participants – thank you KreHtiv!

Throughout 2021, I discovered that day-care workers in my country welcome ICDP and are eager to work with the relational approach.

Therefore, my plan for 2022, is to train key persons in day-cares as ICDP coaches. Their task will be to support colleagues and teams, so that they keep on expanding the ICDP approach in their daily routines.

My goal is to anchor the relational perspective in a sustainable way in the work of professional caregivers. In this way, we can develop resilience in both children and their caregivers – resilience being a key factor in times of uncertainty and social change.

An expert of the World Health Organization said: “ICDP is food for a healthy brain”. This food was tasted by quite a large number of children’s caregivers in Germany during the course of the year – and it seems they wish it to become their regular diet.

October 2021

Update from Aubin Sanou, ICDP trainer and educator at Save the Children Burkina Faso (SC):

The ICDP activities are going well here on the ground. As part of the project activities, I have trained three new facilitators at SC, as well as a group of ten new facilitators, who are implementing the ICDP progarmme through different organizations in partnershiop with SC.

The new team of facilitators participated in the ICDP work of the old team of facilitators, by accompanying them in their field work. This made the process of their training a lot easier.

Alimata Sidibe who has been working closely with me as an ICDP trainer, has left SC; however, the new facilitators received coaching from other technical advisors at SC who had previously received training in ICDP in 2020.

During the training I used simulations of ICDP meetings with caregivers, in order to observe the application of the seven principles of sensitization – and this was useful as a method of learning.

The evaluation of the training was positive, all facilitators found ICDP training and its topics relevant to their work. Some of the comments from trained facilitators:

“Very impeccable training. This will allow the parents and ourselves to live better in our families. Congratulations to the trainers and to all the participants.”

“I learned a lot from this training. I will try as best as possible to implement the programme.”

“I was very happy to have taken part in this training because it enlightened me on a lot of things. I udnerstand parenting skills very well now.”

“I especially liked the group work because it made it possible to apply the training received in a concrete way.”

“The trainers have the right techniques to get the message across.”

“With regard to the content of the modules, this training must be perpetuated even after the project finishes. Also, a good follow-up will allow it to be extended to other programmes or projects.”

“The training was beneficial; it fulfilled a real need – greatly appreciated.”

“The training was really good; we received a lot of knowledge on parenting skills. This knowledge on parenting skills, this knowledge will be applied in the field. Thank you so much.”

“The training was well worth it. The programme was enriching.”

“The 8 guidelines and 7 principles of the ICDP programme will help us develop a good emotional, social and constructive relationship with children.”

Training 11 participants up tofacilitatorlevel in the Bekaa Valley, in Lebanon, 2020/2021.

Report by Michelle MacDonald

Location: The participants were teachers at the two educational centres (primary school level) run by the Jusoor organization, located in the Bekaa valley, which is home to a large Syrian refugee community.

Number of participants: The teachers (6 male+ 5 female) were Syrian refugees themselves living either in the camps or nearby.

Challenges

My ICDP (face – to- face) sessions with this group started in 2020 but had to be interrupted due to the Covid situation- schools having closed their doors- and were only resumed(via Zoom) in April 2021, after I had moved back to the UK. Apart from the online sessions we formed an ICDP WhatsApp group in order to share insights, feedback on home tasks etc., particularly when the live sessions were not possible.

The problems faced by a displaced population, added to the intrinsic problems of a failing host state (Lebanon).  Covid was the last straw to an already deteriorating situation. This posed many challenges with delivering the ICDP training. Power outages and Wi-Fi interruptions resulted in sessions being cancelled at the last minute and then rescheduled only to encounter the same problem again. In spite of the numerous hurdles, the training (12 sessions) was successfully completed.

Feedback

The feedback from the teachers was very positive in spite of all the difficulties. They were grateful for the opportunity that the ICDP training gave them to express themselves in a safe environment. They were able to share their worries, their everyday challenges of constantly having to adapt to changing circumstances, to the deep changes in their way of life since leaving their country, but they also talked about their successes and their resilience. They discussed the impact this has had on their values, traditions, on the changing role of women and how this has affected parental roles and interaction with their children. They reflected on their roles as teachers and shared their insights within the group. They explored together ways they could make some changes in the classroom and gave each other positive feedback. They were very keen to start delivering the ICDP training at caregiver level to the parents of the children they teach, and in fact 2 new groups have already been started. During my 4 years of working with Syrian refugees in Lebanon, I formed 17 facilitators (who are linked to SOS Children’s Villages and Jusoor) and 63 participants at caregiver level.

In June 2021, a group of professionals who have been cooperating with ICDP Ghana for some time, started to receive training to become ICDP facilitators. After the June workshop and as part of their training they have been carrying out a pilot project by implementing the ICDP programme with twenty parents divided in 3 groups. Here is a report describing the progress of the pilot project:

Report by ICDP Ghana regarding training of facilitators and families.

In the second half of 2021, the ICDP chair has started to make plans with an ICDP facilitator on developing a new initiative for Brazil.  The ICDP facilitator Rosilene Thilesen became enthusiastic, inspired and determined to introduce the ICDP programme to social workers and families in Sao Paolo, in her native Brazil, where she has both family and good connections.

Rosilene Thilesen is currently receiving ICDP training online from Nicoletta Armstrong to become an ICDP cerrified trainer. She is also in contact with the ICDP trainer Polyanna Magalhães – Polyanna is also the representative for ICDP in Brazil and will offer background support to Rosilene’s work in the future.

“It is an opportune time to start ICDP in Sao Paolo, as it is a period of great need due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Many families require support, and most of all they need a sensitive approach and warm emotional support, which ICDP can provide so well. I am very excited to be working towards this goal and look forward to the first phase of the project. ” – says Rosilene.

This new ICDP training project in Sao Paolo will start in January 2022. The training will be provided for the local network of social workers linked to the Evangelical church Prova Viva and its pastor Bianca Toledo.

The second phase of the project will be working on introducing the ICDP programme to Rio de Janeiro, in the second half of 2022.

In July 2021, a meeting of the ICDP Bangladesh core team took place at which ICDP trainer and Project Co-Coordinator Sajeda Boby Akter presented a report in order to update the team on the developments of the ICDP programme in Bangladesh.

ICDP is expanding in the country in partnership with four major partners, namely LAMB, Friends of Basha, Salvation Army and Normisjon. The ICDP project has established an ICDP Support Group comprised of the Country Coordinator, expat volunteer, expat consultant and ICDP staff. Normisjon’s director and finance officer are also members of this group. This group meets online for the purpose of supervision of project activities.

In addition to ICDP facilitators, ICDP in Bangladesh has two trainers and several trainee trainers. Apart from Sajeda Boby Akter, Gerd Eli Haaland is the other ICDP trainer – they have together spearheaded most of the ICDP developments in the country. Since Eli returned to Norway during the summer 2021, she will support the ICDP team via Zoom and she also plans to offer support to the project in person during her visit to Bangladesh that is planned for November 2021. The project counts on the support from two other ICDP consultants as well as the ICDP chair.

During the first half of 2021, a number of planned trainings and follow-up progammes had to be cancelled due to the continuous threat from COVID-19. A Baseline Survey was conducted with10 facilitators, 15 children and 15 mothers from LAMB English Medium school and SIM Bangladesh project. One Facilitator level training was completed with seven participants from LAMB. Two more trainings are supposed to be held by the end of August for the participants from the Dhaka and Dinajpur region. In addition, two persons are receiving training so that they can start to train Normisjon project partners.

A total of 48 facilitations and 43 online meetings online were managed during the pandemic crisis. Supervision and monitoring had to be mostly conducted online. After lockdown/shutdown ICDP team hopes to complete all their planned targets.

The ICDP future implementation will involve five organizations in the first year (2022) and seven in the second year (2023). Each partner organization will nominate one person to represent them in the core team. An online training course to form new trainers is planned for ten facilitators from Normisjon, Lamb and SIM, so that by the end of June 2022, there will be seven ICDP certified trainers in Bangladesh.

The translation of a book about scientific research behind ICDP was finished and proof reading is in process.

The Secretariat for Women which is linked to the local government in the city of Medellin, Colombia, organized a series of pedagogical days as part of their traditional yearly celebration of the Day of the Mother and Family. Within the framework of this celebration and in order to  exalt the work of caring for others, ICDP was invited to participate and present its programme.

The pedagogical days were established by the Medellin municipality in 2008, and in the current year 2021, these days aim to provide knowledge and tools to promote awareness about women’s autonomy, in terms of gender and early childhood, making visible the contribution they make to the country’s economy and  development. 

Juliana Zapata Romero from the Secretariat for Women created an alliance with ICDP Colombia and as a result two volunteer professionals, Carolina Montoya and Angélica Díaz, developed and conducted six  pedagogical days on the humanizing content and training in the ICDP programme. This ICDP training was attended by 94 women from three different groups linked to the Welfare Homes Programme of the ICBF institute (Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar/ICBF is the Colombian Family Welfare Institute) and it took place during the second week in June 2021.

Bishwa Pun, coordinates ICDP at Save the Children Nepal and she is also an ICDP trainer – she shares the following news:

Parenting comes with its fair share of joys and challenges. Navigating parenting during COVID-19 has become even more challenging as parents and children spend an unprecedented amount of time together at home. Most of us have experienced this for ourselves.

Save the Children has been collaborating with Stories of Nepal https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal in order to bring stories of the parents who have adopted gentler and affirmative parenting techniques inspired by the ICDP programme. These stories talk about parents taking care of children with love, providing enriching interactions, and establishing limits in a positive way, thus supporting children’s physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development. Our Child Sensitive Social Protection programme (CSSP) provides technical support to local governments to run parenting programmes for parents and caregivers of the Child Grant beneficiaries. The Child Grant is the government’s cash transfer programme aiming to reduce malnutrition of children aged below 5 years and the ICDP programme is part of this initiative.

Stories and Photos Submitted:

https://savethechildren1my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/ganga_pyakurel_savethechildren_org/EunRp3dN0ahIk6VrZnITo1AB5D03QikyzFoQgOo6x4VhMQ?e=NNedYF

Links to the Posts:

Post 1: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4091886824243105

Post 2: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4093493094082478

Post 3: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4096419207123200

Post 4: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4099293550169099

Post 5: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4103755086389612

Post 6: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4108193439279110

Post 7: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4112707178827736

Post 8: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4116046005160520

Post 9: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4127588670672920

Post 10: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4130774360354351

Post 11: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4134016326696821

Post 12: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4140016072763513

Post 13: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4148408075257646

Post 14: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4154918561273264

Post 15: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4169592756472511

Post 16: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4172494799515640

Post 17: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4178329352265518

Post 18: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4181841021914351

Post 19: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4185264614905325

Post 20: https://www.facebook.com/TheStoriesOfNepal/posts/4187842624647524

The Happy Start preschool has extended its work from Tashkent to Serdaja, a town about an hour and a half from Tashkent, in Uzbekistan. The new preschool is called Happy Start 3 and the ICDP programme will be integrated as part of the work of its teachers, whereas the children’s parents will also be offered a course in ICDP later in 2021.

In June 2021, two ICDP facilitators, Valentina Tan and Mardalena Brannstrom (on photo above) visited the Serdaja Happy Start 3 preschool in order to attend the end of year celebration for the 6- and 7-year-old pupils. They had a special programme for the children but they also conducted a session about empathy for the parents, inspired by the ICDP programme. The group explored how they show empathy to their children.

“It was really nice and the parents liked it. We had lots of parents sharing their experiences and showing interest to participate in the training. We showed some videos of positive Interaction which we had made at the Happy Start preschool in Tashkent, where we already trained a group of preschool teachers. One of the fathers said that when we start rolling out the ICDP programme for parents in the autumn of this year, he will join and participate in the training.” – says Magdalena.

Photo above is of one of the participant mothers with her two children.

Autumn 2021 will be a busy time for the ICDP facilitators, Magdalena and Valentina. They plan to train parents as well as teachers at Happy Start and in addition, they are preparing a leaflet and a promotional video about the ICDP programme directed at preschool teachers in general. They plan to visit different schools in order to inform them about ICDP and to offer to run a training programme at their school.  

The ICDP programme was introduced in the Higashi Mikata Hoikuen nursery school. The nursery is located in the Hamamatsu (浜松市, Hamamatsu-shi) city in western Shizuoka Prefecture. Link to the nursery website: ひがしみかた保育園 (h-mikata.com).

Hitoshi Maeshima, ICDP trainer and doctor by profession, shared his story about this new ICDP endeavour:

This year (2021), I was contacted by a nursery school director who asked me to become their school doctor. The school in question is the Higashi Mikdat Hoikuen nursery, which opened in April 2021. It can accommodate 120 children and 27 nursery teachers. Several months later, around the 10^th of June, the director, the secretary and a nursery teacher visited my clinic and we agreed that I should become their official doctor. I used this opportunity to talk about ICDP; I explained that I went to England three times to participate in ICDP training workshops and afterwards I started to apply the  ICDP programme in Japan. During the ten years of using the ICDP programme I discovered how by following the simple ICDP guidelines the relationship between caregivers and their children can be improved, promoting a balanced development of the child’s emotions and intellect. The director has many years of experience in childcare and immediately expressed interest in the programme and showed her appreciation and understanding about the importance of the ICDP guidelines in childcare.  She confirmed that she would like to apply the ICDP programme in practice in the nursery and also with the nursery teachers. I agreed to help introduce the programme and we made plans for the training. My first visit to the nursery took place on 14^th of July 2021 – during this visit I started the training of the nursery teachers ( see photo above).