Parenting Young Children in Sweden
We have begun the first international application of the Parenting Young Children program in Sweden.
Parenting Young Children (PYC) is a parent education program to help parents with learning difficulty develop skills and confidence in parenting tasks. The skills include basic child care such as feeding, sleeping and safety, and parent–child interactions.
As part of the research in Sweden, we are investigating factors at the practitioner level and organisational level that are known to influence the successful adoption and implementation of a program into a new context. Research tells us that good programs will only be effective for families if they are implemented with fidelity by professionals who view the program as acceptable and useful, and when organisations demonstrate commitment to sustained implementation of the program.
The evaluation will measure client outcomes as well as the success of the implementation. It will be conducted in three phases. In phase one, now complete, we translated the program into Swedish and evaluated the social validity (acceptability and usefulness) of the program from the perspective of professionals and parents using the program. In phase two we will evaluate the implementation of PYC across Sweden, including assessment of the facilitators and barriers to effective implementation at the practitioner and organisational levels. In phase three we will examine organisational factors associated with the successful sustained delivery of the program over time in the Swedish context.
Nine municipalities in Sweden will implement PYC. Thirty Swedish professionals have already been trained to implement the program with families, and further training has been scheduled in Sweden for March 2012.
Read more about the research methodology in our Creating Knowledge section: Parenting with a Learning Difficulty in Sweden.
