Umeå University and Umeå municipality receive 8.8 million for parental support
NEWS
The most important contribution to good health throughout life is a good childhood environment. That's the opinion of Swedish public health department, which grants 8.8 million Swedish kronor to Umeå University and Umeå municipality for stimulating the development and evaluation of parental support in the Umeå region.
Several researchers in Umeå are involved in the parental support project Familjepeppen. An important sideproject of Familjepeppen, Guiding interaction ("Vägledande samspel"), is a health beneficial program for parents and care personnel who work with children.
The program is applied to preschool, child care and social service. Rickard Garvare is associate professor in quality management at Luleå Technical University and is together with Annelli Ivarsson, child specialist and senior fellow at Umeå University, involved with the project.
– Guiding interaction is a program where we educate personnel to gain a deeper understanding of the child's perspective on things. We also study changes in work methods among personnel who for instance might work at a family help center. Sometimes there's a great distance between idea and action, and our work is therefore very much dedicated to investigating what praxises are used and why.
The project will lead to extensive personnel training, says Rickard Garvare, and the goal of the parental support project is to understand how permanent changes in child care work come about.
– We conduct studies at education events with the personnel. Then we make follow-ups to see how the work methods of the personnel have changed. Through our work we hope to shorten the time between knowledge and application.
