The Centre for Parenting Support ‘Growing up Together’ (‘Rastimo zajedno’), in partnership with UNICEF, develops accessible, evidence-informed and sustainable universal, targeted and indicated group-based parenting support programmes and supports the network of professionals who implement them in family centres, kindergartens and NGO’s throughout Croatia. Besides programmes Growing up Together for parents of young children (Pećnik & Starc, 2010) and Growing up Together Plus for parents of pre-school children with disabilities (Pećnik et al., 2014), the Centre has developed a programme for vulnerable parents in adverse parenting circumstances, entitled Growing up Together – Count Us In! (Pećnik et al., 2019.) It consists of three components: a programme of 15 weekly, 90-minutes-long workshops with parents, aiming to enhance parents’ psychosocial resources for positive parenting, and a programme of workshops with their children (3-6 years old) that are run simoultaneously with the aim to support their wellbeing and resilience. Those workshops are followed by a 30-minutes session of joint parent-child play focused to strengthening parent-child secure attachment. Workshops are facilitated by psychologists and social workers with additional training.
The main method to determine programme impact was a quantitative evaluation of data collected pre- and post- intervention with standardised questionnaires: Parenting Daily
Hassles (Crnic& Greenberg, 1990); Parental self-efficacy (Kerestes et al., 2009); Parent’s reactions to child’s misbehaviour - attempted understanding and angry outbursts (Stattin et al., 2011); developmentally positive (reading, playing) and negative (shouting, hitting) interaction (Pecnik, 2014); Parental beliefs (Pecnik et al., 2011); The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (Goodman, 1997) for child that has participated in programme of workshops for children.
Results from 27 groups that participated in test implementation (N=148 parents who – completed the programme) reveal the expected changes in how parents feel and behave in parental role, including significant decrease in parenting stress (both in the number of stressors encountered in parental role, and the intensity of distress parents have experienced in coping with those stressors). After the program parents reported an increase in parental selfefficacy beliefs, and in positive, developmentally desirable interaction with the child as well as a decrease in frequency of shouting at and hitting the child.
Through the course of the 15 workshops with vunerable preschool children, facilitators observed that children develop more positive self-concept, become aware of their capabilities, including the ability to understand own emotions and emotions of others. They are also more able to find sources of support in coping with difficult situations.
After test implementation (in 2018 and 2019) this programme is proposed as a new early intervention service of the social welfare system with the intention to bridge the gap in
provision of family support services for disadvantaged parents of young children at-risk or engaged with child protection system.
The process of development, implementation and evaluation of the Growing Up Together Count Us In programme will be discussed with respect to the quality standards for evidence-based family support programmes that were developed within the framework of the COST Action 8123: The European Family Support Network. A bottom-up, evidence-based and multidisciplinary approach (https://eurofamnet.eu/).