Morrison, J;
Pikhart, H;
Goldblatt, P;
(2017)
Interventions to reduce inequalities in health and early child development in Europe from a qualitative perspective.
International Journal for Equity in Health
, 16
, Article 87. 10.1186/s12939-017-0584-0.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Early childhood is a critical stage of development. Inequalities in experiences affect children's wellbeing and determine their development. Early years interventions focusing on children and their parents may help address inequalities during this critical period. Understanding the experiences and perceptions of parents receiving early years programmes and staff providing these may help service development and delivery. The objective of this study was to describe staff and parents' accounts of how early childhood programmes in different European country contexts improved child development. METHODS: Five early years programmes were selected using pre-set criteria out of ten proposed ones. Twenty-five individual interviews and six focus groups were carried out with staff running interventions and with users, children and their families in different EU countries. Investigations of the studies were carried out using qualitative research methods. Data were collected by collaborating partner institutions included in the project. RESULTS: Participants described programmes which aimed to provide activities to stimulate children's learning through structured play and which provided support and assistance for parents. In these, parents were actively involved in activities. Parents and staff referred to establishing long-term trust based relationships as a key element for programmes to improve parents' self-esteem and reduce their stress levels which in turn helped improve their children's development. CONCLUSIONS: Programmes described by staff as being successful, delivered services tailored to parents and their children. Adapting to and understanding the families' circumstances and involving parents was seen by staff as important. Staff also described establishing trust based relationships as a key enabler in programme delivery; their perceptions were that parents should be empowered to develop their own capacities thus strengthening their abilities to assist in their children's learning, which had a positive effect on children.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Interventions to reduce inequalities in health and early child development in Europe from a qualitative perspective |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1186/s12939-017-0584-0 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1186/s12939-017-0584-0 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
| Keywords: | Child development, Early intervention, Poverty, Socioeconomic factors |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute of Epidemiology and Health > Epidemiology and Public Health |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1557086 |
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