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JANUARY 2005

NEW PROJECT IN ARGENTINA

The team from Mina Clavero started developing a new project by training 14 new persons as ICDP promoters. The promoters are in charge of 6 preschool centres, situated in the poor and remote rural areas of the Valle de Traslasierra. The project will reach 60 families and 150 children will benefit directly from the program. The adaptation of the ICDP pack, which took several months of work, was finally accomplished. Caregiver child interactions were filmed  and edited, ready for use in seminars and workshops as examples for the 3 dialogues of the ICDP program. For the manuals and booklets local interactive images were used, see some of them in the photos below: 

 

FEBRUARY

FIELD VISITS IN MOZAMBIQUE

Training of a core team for wide scale implementation of ICDP in Mozambique continued throughout February.

There were several field visits to areas where ICDP intervention will take place:

- The first visit was to a local NGO called “Reencontro”  that operates in the outskirts of Maputo in the very poorest areas where AIDS represents a serious problem. The combination of extreme poverty, general low health and HIV/AIDS combines to destroy the social cohesion and commitment of the family and its caring capacity. In one of the homes we visited there were several children between 2 and 6 years of age,  abandoned by their father – who is alcoholic and appears now and then, beats and behaves brutally towards the children. One of the children was crying with pain from an infection in one leg which looked quite serious; the father had refused to go to hospital because he did not think it was serious. He was away and left the children alone. The mother had died from AIDS some time ago, and the father was also most probably infected. The women next door took care of the children to some way, although she also behaved roughly and insensitively towards them. The general lack of care is extremely serious. The NGO Reencontro provides some support particularly with daily meals.

- The other family we visited had in some sense a better situation, because the father was emotionally alive and communicative, although very ill and thin due to AIDS. He was lying on a mat in the yard in front of the house, which looked more like a shack, where he lives with four children. He could barely walk, but was happy to speak to us. He seemed to have had a good job linked to European Community’s representation in Mozambique. When he became ill with AIDS they helped him to get to hospital, but after that he did not hear anything more from the EU and their humanitarian work in Africa.  He was now alone with the children. His wife had died early also due to AIDS and now it was in fact the children who cared for him – with some support from Reencontro. Soon this will be a child-headed family as the father will probably die within a short time.

- The third institution was a kindergarten in Portuguese style, with well-dressed middle class children singing and clapping collectively in well-equipped localities with an ambitious leader who inspired her staff. It could have been anywhere in Europe the standard was quite high.

- As contrast to this middle class institution,, we visited next the institutions for abandoned orphans and sick children. This is a state-owned institution called “1st of May”. This was a shocking experience. All kinds of abandoned children were dropped into this institution, children with cerebral palsy were lying alone on the ground without any care, crawling along, without any human contact other than what they could do by touching and pushing each other. Some of them were so thin that they seemed like skeltons – clearly some of them would soon die… There was no medical care in the institution at all, and to take them to hospital they would have to walk all the way in the heat and only those who could walk would get medical care. There were young children sitting alone in a state of apathy and depression. In the second floor there was a ward for infants and young children. This was also a tragic sight – isolated children depressed, just sitting and looking in front of them, or infants in bed craving for attention and care, but without anybody paying attention and being emotionally available because of the understaffing and the general resignation of the staff…W hat came as an additional shock, was that the caregivers or the staff, did not seem to understand the situation, they described this as normal and they  complained that the government only gives the institution 100 US dollar to run the whole place! This means that the World Food Program provides some food and there is an Italian organization that has bought some dolls and toys and painted the wall, but nobody seems to recognize the terrible suffering of the abandoned children both physically and psychologically. In this institution there were only 4 caregivers for more then 80 children, a large part infants! During weekends only 1 caregiver!

 Finally we visited a village for street children run by the Norwegian Pentacostal NGO. This village was located outside Maputo in nice rural surroundings with an enormous space around. We talked to the staff who are going to be trained in the ICDP Program. Most of the children seemed to be above 8-9 years up to 18-20. This village serves like a substitute home for them with rotating housemothers for about 8 children. In this respect this village is different from SOS villages which have permanent “mothers” or caregivers for the children in each house. The children attend the local school and in addition there are different types of vocational training possibilities inside the compound. It all looked clean and orderly and a great contrast to the orphanage that was referred to above. The religious aspect was quite evident and it may be that some of the more rebellious street children may have some problem to adapt to this type of decent orderly and religious environment.

MARCH

LAUNCH OF PROJECT IN BOYACA, COLOMBIA

On the 18th February, at a press conference, the Governor of the Boyaca province launched the ICDP project, expressing with great enthusiasm his conviction of its great importance for future healthy development of Colombian society, and particularly in Boyaca, where the family violence problem is the highest in Colombia. He stressed the uniqueness of this project, as for the first time all the different government institutions will be involved in the same training and implementation in 123 towns of Boyaca – something that never happened on such large scales. The project is mainly sponsored by UNICEF and FPAA, but there is also a significant contribution from the province itself.

The governor’s wife, the First Lady, said “she had fallen in love with ICDP at the first seminar held in November 2004”. Ever since then has been supervising personally all the details involving the preparation and development of the project, and has regularly attended the training workshops; currently she is doing field work by delivering ICDP to parents of the children attending the same school as her 6 year old son.

WORKING WITH DIFFERENT NETWORKS SIMULTANEOUSLY

The ICDP workshops, held throughout March, were attended by representatives from different networks, including preschool teachers, educational psychologists, community mothers, health nurses, doctors, clergy and university students and teachers – and each group came to the training with different expectations in line with their own fields of work. At first this proved to be rather a challenge, but gradually the participants grew to understand what ICDP was about and realized the practical value it could have when implemented. The next challenge was to find out how exactly to fit in ICDP as part of their daily work – without creating too much extra work for all. Again the governor and his wife proved to be of great help, as they summoned the Secretaries of all departments and we could discuss these issues thoroughly – in fact, ICDP was officially adopted by all as a long term strategy, not just for this year. In addition, an ICDP presentation was given at a meeting attended by almost all 123 mayors of the Boyaca province, which helped promote our work on municipal levels and also reinforce commitment towards it.

APRIL

VISIT TO NORWAY BY MANUEL MANRIQUE

Manuel Manrique, the UNICEF representative for Colombia and Venezuela, accompanied by Nicoletta Armstrong, the ICDP international consultant for Colombia, came on a two day visit to Oslo on 26 and 27th of April, to attend several meetings with the ICDP board. He visited the Foreign Ministry in order to present the ICDP work carried out with UNICEF's support, over the past 4 years in Colombia.

He recommended the ICDP program as a potentially significant contribution to building peace and harmony in the world. To read about ICDP in  Colombia click here. For the summary of the professional evaluation of the Nariño project click here.

 

SCANDINAVIAN NETWORK MEETING IN OSLO

The meeting took place 21. –22. April 2005, and was the third meeting of people representing ICDP activities in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. The first was held in Sweden in 2003, last year the meeting was in Denmark. From Sweden 11 people participated, from Denmark 10, and from Norway 26. The participants represented a variety of professional backgrounds such as health nurses, preschool teachers, teachers, special educators, social workers, psychologists, working in different fields such as health services, educational services, child protection, child psychiatry, habilitation/ rehabilitation services, special education services, pedagogical-educational services, higher education, training and research at universities.  What all participants had in common is that ICDP’s professional philosophy and practical approach is central to their work with children, youth and families as well as to their involvement in teaching and training of professionals at different levels and in different fields in their respective countries.

ICDP is now legally and formally registered in all three countries, and is becoming known, accepted and implemented in different professional contexts. In Norway ICDP is in the process of being implemented in a new national parent counselling programme, and the Swedish government is considering to do the same. In Denmark several local projects are under development in different parts of the country, and CVU (Centre of further education) in North Jylland has adopted ICDP ‘s philosophy as a guideline for the centre’s training and professional development programmes.

The main objective of these Nordic meetings is exchange of experience related to professional use of the ICDP approach in the work with children, youth and families with different needs and in different contexts. The programme of this meeting contained interesting presentations of activities with children and families with special needs, children from minority families, children under child protection, children with physical or serious social-emotional needs, etc. Presentations highlighted projects at different administrative levels; regional, municipality, institutional levels.  In addition there were workshops and in dept presentation and discussion. 

The general impression was that ICDP is today becoming a widely accepted and highly appreciated way of working in the Scandinavian countries, and it is in the process of being introduced to new and challenging professional fields.

MAY

ICDP ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING IN OSLO

The ICDP annual general meeting took place in Oslo on the 28th May. The ICDP development ”story” over the last 4 years, was looked at from 3 key aspects: project development, organisational development and program development.

Project developments in the last 4 years were considerable, with large scale ICDP implementation in Angola, Colombia, Macedonia, Norway, and increasingly so in Sweden and Denmark, with a cluster of smaller projects in Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina, and a new project in Mozambique. Training workshops were also held in Kyrgyzstan, Uruguay and Australia.

With respect to organisational development it became clear that in a number of countries, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Macedonia, Ukraine, there is lack of administrative structures able to collect information and report about ICDP activities to the ICDP international. It was agreed to consider the issue of withdrawal right from start, i.e. to ask ourselves when starting new projects what would happen when ICDP withdraws.

There were also substantial program developments: ICDP produced a lot of new materials; there are manuals and accompanying audio-visual materials, articles and books in quite a number of different countries and for different target groups.

Decisions were taken to start making some organisational changes to make space for future wide  expansion of ICDP in the world.  Different working groups were set up: to explore alternative organisational models, to work on information gathering, to develop further our promotional materials and to formulate an overall strategic plan for development.  One possible line of development was discussed in the discussion paper presented to the Foreign Ministry.

JUNE

THE ICDP PROGRAM GOES NATIONAL IN NORWAY

At the meeting in Oslo on 7th of June, between ICDP and the Ministry for Children and Family Social Affairs it was decided to implement ICDP as parenting program all over the country. ICDP has long history of cooperation with the Ministry, which started back in 1996 when ICDP received its first grant for working through social, educational and health networks in Oslo and other areas of the country; then followed a research program applying ICDP in an adapted form in schools; and in the recent years the emphasis was put on working with families from different minority groups. In view of the rapid and extensive growth of ICDP in Norway, it was suggested at the recent AGM to separate ICDP International from ICDP Norway by registering a Norwegian local branch.

JULY

THE SECOND INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP

The second ICDP International Workshop was held from 4-6th July, at the Institute of psychology, University of Oslo, from 9 am to 4 pm. Workshop program

 

ICDP IN SANTO ANGELO, BRAZIL

Alfonso Elezar Luft, the ICDP project leader from Santo Angelo, made a presentation of the ICDP training project which reached over 4000 children and 1500 families.

AUGUST

EVALUATION OF ICDP IN ASUNCION, PARAGUAY

The ICDP trainer Elisabeth Benita Gavilan and her local team of facilitators had their work evaluated. The evaluation document is a summary of the questionnaires filled in by professionals from the Ministry for Public Health and Social Services Institute that illustrates a positive reception and impact of the ICDP courses.

SEPTEMBER

ICDP VISIT TO MOZAMBIQUE

Professor Karsten Hundeide visited the project to conduct seminars and evaluate the work accomplished so far. The photo presentation "When children care for children" gives a glimpse of the suffering of many children and families living in poverty aggravated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Photo from: "When children care for children"

 

ICDP REPORT FOR UNICEF COLOMBIA 

ICDP Colombia report about the work accomplished during the 4 years of cooperation with UNICEF was distributed to all participants at the UNICEF Colombia mid term review meeting, held in Bogota, on the 20th September.

The photo shows one of the ICDP facilitators in action -  he is applying ICDP inside a prison. Prisoners are watching the ICDP didactic video; the red ICDP booklet with the 8 guidelines for good interaction is held by the facilitator standing at the door.

OCTOBER

ICDP SEMINAR IN BUKAVU, CONGO

The Norwegian organization "Pinsemenighetenes Ytremisjon" in cooperation with the Congolese organization "Celpa" invited ICDP to hold a training seminar in Bukavu. 

A  4-day workshop was recently held for teachers and school-leaders on how to use ICDP in their daily work in schools. They found the ICDP program very useful especially in relation to physical punishment of children. There is so far no plan for following up in Congo.

 

NEWS FROM WEST- BENGAL, INDIA:

A ICDP seminar presented as "culturally independent competence-training for parents and professionals working with children" is planned by  Karl-Peter Hubbertz, a psychologist and social worker, with 20 years experience of working in different counselling centres and child-guidance clinics in Germany. Since 1999, he is teaching Social Work at the University of Applied Sciences in Nuremberg, Germany. He is a member of Indienhilfe and he is familiar with the partners of Indienhilfe in West-Bengal and is now preparing the ICDP seminar for 2006.

Dr Hubbertz writes:

“After 12 years teaching in school I realized that I can see and understand every child as a special and particular person!” This statement comes from one of the teachers in the Centre for Child Workers of Rural Health Development Centre (RHDC) in Malda, who are working there with children from poor families. It is one example for the positive feedback and learning-motivation which was aroused during an introduction-workshop on ICDP in Malda. People said: This is really new for us – we never looked at children in this way!

In December 2004 and January 2005 there were two introduction-workshops in ICDP in West-Bengal. They were held in Athgara and Malda, each lasting three days. Participants were social workers, teachers, health workers, medical doctors and other professionals working in child development-centres, children’s homes, schools, health education or with self-help-groups of mothers. Most of them wanted to continue their learning-process in ICDP!

ICDP is working in a community-based way by training and mobilising resource persons in local networks and organisations to spread the programme further to local caregivers. Through this approach the promoters of ICDP are able to reach more caregivers, families and children at risk than it would be possible in a traditional institutional or clinical approach employed by many NGOs working in this field.

We are planning now one more extended seminar on ICDP in February 2006, which is held for the professionals from different NGOs sponsored by and cooperating with  Indienhilfe. It is planned to prepare the seminar together with two or three other key-persons which will then take over the role of co-leaders. Participants should be always one pair of professionals from each project in different regions of West-Bengal who can cooperate as colleagues and conduct an ICDP-course in their own field. Preferably, this should be always one female and one male colleague in order to establish good contacts with mothers and fathers. It is important that these pairs have enough time and space in their daily professional work to implement and conduct an ICDP-course in their own field. For this purpose, they should have the possibility to visit 3 follow-up meetings with other participants in the region during the next months. On the whole, there should not be more than 16-18 participants.

The seminar shall last one week and shall take place in SKC Kolkata. Aim of the seminar is to teach a structured ICDP-programme for working with groups of parents and other caregivers, which consists of twelve training-sessions and covers many practical exercises in accordance with the twelve-Meetings Agenda explained in detail in the ICDP Manual for Promoters.  In September 2006 there will be a follow-up seminar for the same group, supervising the work of the participants and reflecting their practical experiences with ICDP.

NOVEMBER

NEW TRAINING PROJECTS IN COLOMBIA

From Nicoletta Lailah Armstrong, one of the founders of ICDP and Senior Trainer: there are 2 new projects : one is in cooperation with the Medellin Municipality, and the other one is with the research organisation CINDE. I am starting to give ICDP training seminars to two different groups of professionals, who will first apply ICDP in practice with families at risk and then later they will start training their colleagues and ultimately will be reaching 3500 families. Professionals from CINDE, currently involved in social projects called "Colombianos apoyando Colombianos" will take ICDP to Medellin, Manizales and Bogota; whereas the other team will insert ICDP in the integrated program  for social assistance called "Buen Comienzo" which is already in process of being delivered in the town of Medellin, in its most marginalized areas.  Funding is by these organisations in cooperation with UNICEF.

 

NEW PROJECT STARTING IN PARAGUAY

From the ICDP team, led by Benita Elisabeth Gavilan: "At the beginning of the month we held our first training course in a small town 100 km from Asuncion, as part of our new project, financed by Fondo Canada. The ICDP sensitizing course is delivered to students who will be future kindergarten teachers."

 

NEW ICDP INITIATIVE IN BARRIO DE VILLA HALL, IN THE PROVINCE OF BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA

The photo above was taken by the ICDP facilitator Lamberto Arevalo, at his fourth ICDP meeting with mothers in Barrio de Villa Hall

"As result of our work so far, this group of 14 mothers is showing interest to reflect not only on the role they have as mothers inside the family, but also to review how they as women could improve the situation in their community, particularly in the area of helping children with special needs."

DECEMBER

INTRODUCTION TO ICDP BY ICDP CHAIRMAN

Click here to read

 

DEVELOPMENTS IN NORWAY

With the support of the Ministry for Children and Family Affairs, ICDP is developing a wide country program with ICDP projects reaching several different target groups:

1. Families from different ethnic minority groups

This project started in 2003 and up till today 100 facilitators were trained in 3 cities in Oslo, Drammen and Stavanger. The new project will build on the work done so far and ICDP will be implemented in other cities, starting with Bergen, Trondheim and some smaller cities on the west coast. Some of the facilitators will be trained to the level of trainers in order to create a larger team leading the ICDP work with families from different minority groups. The ICDP model will be used with refugee families also. The project leader is psychologist Mona Hannestad.

2. Ethnic minority families with children under child protection

The objective is both to adapt the program and to investigate its potential use for this highly vulnerable group. At the centre of the project will be four families from different ethnic minority groups, all with children under child protection. These families will participate in the ICDP sensitization program and they will be investigated as case studies with a qualitative methodology.  This project has just started with a group of mothers from Somalia. The project is led by Mona Hannestad.

3. Families in general whose children are under child protection

The idea of this pilot project is to adapt the ICDP program for working with children and parents in vulnerable life situations. The implementation of the ICDP program through systems related to child protection  appears to be one of the more challenging tasks. ICDP's format of working with parents in groups represents a new model and it is fulfilling the many requests for parents' guidance. The project leaders are two ICDP trainers, psychologist Ingeborg Egebjerg, and Clinical pedagogue Janni Eriksen.

4. Project for families with special needs children

This project is currently in process of being planned and will start in the spring of 2006. ICDP trainer Hilde Tornes is leading the project. She is the psychological and educational advisor at the Bergen municipality office, in the section for pedagogical and psychological services. The project will try out and adapt ICDP as an intervention program for use in kindergartens and possibly schools, focusing on families with special needs children.

5. Parents in prisons

This project was launched by The Ministry of Justice in cooperation with the Ministry for Children and Family Affairs with the aim of applying the ICDP program inside the Norwegian prison system all over the country. The prison staff will receive ICDP training and use the  program to sensitise parents living inside the prisons. The intention is to offer these parents an opportunity to develop and reflect on their role as parents. Many of the prisoners have regular contact with their children, and the idea is to assist parents to help their own children cope with the difficult life situation they are faced with, as well as focus on improving relational issues. The project is lead by psychologist Ingeborg Egebjerg, and the project coordinator for the program of parental guidance is Grete Flakk.

6. Evaluation project

This project will measure the impact of ICDP implementation on some selected target groups in Norway. The project is in preparation and is led by professor Karsten Hundeide.

7. Care for the elderly

A project proposal has been prepared in which the ICDP principles are adapted for the care of the elderly. A pilot project is to be implemented both in institutions in Oslo, as well as in Alicante, Spain. The coordinator for the project will be Angelica Majos, supported by Martin Waage and Helen Andresen. Funding is not yet clear.

NEWS FROM HAIFA, ISRAEL

Between 1998 and 2002, Alla Magidson was both the coordinator and the key trainer for ICDP in Ukraine. For the last few years Alla has been living in Haifa, from where she sends news about her work:

 

            Alla (on the right) giving an ICDP course

 "My work in Haifa started by giving a series of 3 day courses at the child diagnostics centre and in Technion dormitories for new mothers.  Currently I am  employed as psychologist working with ICDP on regular basis at the education centre called “Mofet”. This organization aims to improve the quality of education in Israel. As result of my work there has been improvement of the general atmosphere at the school, particularly in the interaction between the teachers, children and their parents.

                               Course participants

Lena and Alex are two professionals working with children and families at the Mofet centre, who showed deeper interest in ICDP and are now applying ICDP inside their professions. Alex Mnatsakanov, was born in Moscow where in 1997 he graduated in philosophy; in January 2000 he left Russia and did his master studies in sociology at the Haifa University, Israel. He teaches 3-5 year old children. Lena is qualified in special needs area and works in child diagnostics. She gives individual and group classes to parents and children, where she integrated the ICDP principles. Recently we have opened a kindergarten as part of the “Mofet” school, for children between 3 months and 6 years of age and we will be extending ICDP here too." 

NEW PROJECT IN MINA CLAVERO, ARGENTINA

The ICDP facilitator, Virna Casuccio informs about recent ICDP developments in the area of Mina Clavero, where a group of professionals linked to the Hospital de La Paz, in the zone of Valle de Traslasierra are now starting a new project with the aim of reaching 70 families and children living in the surrounding communities. This group of professionals already received training in ICDP and will now be spreading the program  through the health network.

Virna also writes that the ICDP team in Mina Clavero, in cooperation with local mothers and musicians finished gathering music material for the production of a CD. The CD will be finalized and produced early next year as a compilation of local songs, nursery rhymes, lullabies and word games. The music CD will be used as one of the sensitization tools at ICDP meetings with caregivers and children, as part of the ICDP pack of materials adapted to local context.

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