Consistent parenting support - Preventive social work in family centres

Family centers, which offer maternal and child health care, open preschool, and preventive social services to expectant and new parents with young children, are in need of knowledge about social prevention work for families that are hard to reach and whose problems can be linked to a new type of vulnerability. Due to changes in asylum rules, including new restrictions on obtaining permanent residence permits, many families live in so called temporariness, a form of temporary living conditions due to uncertainty about where to settle, how to support themselves and how long they can stay in Sweden. The aim of the utilization project “Responsive parenting support” is to produce a Guidance for practical support and transnational parenting in preventive social work at a family center that addresses the needs of these parents.

Based on a national survey, interviews, and observations of the work at family centers and in parent interviews, the need for specially adapted support in the form of transnational and practical parenting support has emerged. Knowledge of such support is not currently incorporated into general parenting support programs used by family centers.

The guide will be produced through a series of collaborative workshops involving researchers, family center social workers and parents. The guide will be tested at a national conference for family centers, and continuous input from experts in the field will be received. Knowledge about transnational and practical parenting support can also be incorporated into established parenting programs and thus become an integrated perspective on parenting. The content of the guide will also be highly relevant to realizing the goal of the new Social Services Act of an easily accessible and preventive social service, for example to identify needs before they become too great when it comes to new parents with a migration background.