Family Partner – Co-development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Child Maltreatment Prevention Intervention

The Family Partner project seeks to improve the services directed at the most vulnerable group in society; children growing up at risk of maltreatment.

Maltreatment threatens a child’s health, dignity and trust, and can cause fatal injury, adverse health outcomes and reduced life chances. Child Welfare Services need more evidence-informed practices to prevent child maltreatment, and provide follow-up to at-risk families with complex needs. 

The goal of the Family Partner project is to develop, implement and evaluate a new intervention for the Norwegian Child Welfare Services. The Family Partner intervention is delivered by a specially trained family partner, through

1. home visitation and intensive follow up,
2. parental training, and
3. coordination of welfare services.

The goal is to improve services for vulnerable children, promote families’ agency and trust in welfare services, improve children's life chances, and prevent child maltreatment.

Family Partner is a challenging and complex undertaking in public innovation, where the co-development, adaptation, implementation and evaluation of an intervention involves several collaborators; an international research team, municipalities, SOS Children’s Villages, user representatives and national and municipal stakeholders. 

The intervention remains to be systematically adapted to and tested in a Norwegian context.
The Family Partner project will:

1. Co-develop the Family Partner intervention manual and adapt it for the Child Welfare Services with collaborators,
2. Monitor and facilitate the implementation of the Family Partner intervention in two municipalities,
3. Evaluate the municipal implementation and trial design, regarding adaptability, acceptability, feasibility, and costs,
4. Prepare an Expansion of the Family Partner intervention in the municipal services, and examine the feasibility for a multi-site Randomised Controlled Trial, and
5. Disseminate findings to the practice field, wider public and the academic milieu.