In 2007 I designed an ICDP pilot project for Colombia, which was based on the Scandinavian model used in preschools and schools in Norway and Sweden. In Colombia we have been working with ICDP since 1994 and these experiences served as basis for the adaptation of the model to the local cultural and educational context which is very different from the Scandinavian. The pilot project was carried out in a local school in La Tebaida, Quindio, in the “Colegio Luis Arango Cardona” showing positive results.
The present project aims to continue building on this previous work, more specifically:
- to follow up the training of the teachers who already received ICDP,
- to train new teachers,
- to train one selected teacher to the level of ICDP trainer who can sustain ICDP in the future and thus make ICDP a part of the routine training of teachers.
Information about ICDP
ICDP is a competence building agency (registered in Norway in 1992) in the field of psycho-social and educational care of children at high risk. Our general strategy is to convey competence and expertise, not only to individuals, but to organizations, universities, educational institutions and networks of care, so that the impact of our training can be spread wider, reaching more disadvantaged children and families, and be sustained longer, than individual or institutionally oriented interventions towards a limited number of disadvantaged caregivers and children. See www.icdp.info
Most agencies working with children who have undergone extreme deprivation naturally focus on their physical needs. But keeping them alive is only the first step. It is now well known that unless a child has a caring adult to love him and teach him life skills, social behaviour and morals that he needs, his mental and emotional development will be impaired. Recent research suggests that normal physical development of the brain depends on proper interaction between a caring adult and the growing child. In normal circumstances such learning happens naturally. But when families are uprooted through social changes, migration, catastrophes, children losing their parents, or having been numbed by severe deprivation and emotional shock, this care often breaks down and has to be reactivated through skilled help. If children do not receive sufficient love and attention while they are young, the problem also perpetuates itself because later on they become inadequate parents. ICDP's focus, therefore, is on trying to break this cycle. It does so by reactivating the existing caring skills and network that have been overlaid by stresses related to extreme poverty, social uprooting, migration, war and disaster.
We deal both with organizations and local networks of care, by training selected key-persons in our programme who can then train others inside their organizations or networks.
The ICDP programme aims to bring out and sustain good quality interaction between caregivers and their children, by raising the awareness of caregivers about their children’s psycho-social needs, by increasing their sensitivity as well as ability to empathise and respond to these needs.
The above objective is best achieved through facilitative, rather than instructive guidance, which encourages active involvement and sharing among all participants in the ICDP programme. The objective is to create a warm human environment with space for self reflection and self discovery, without imposing readymade formulas from outside.
Participant caregivers are invited to share their observations about their children's behaviour and their own responses to it. The task of the group leader, (an ICDP facilitator or an ICDP promoter), is to facilitate discussions with inquiring questions and then to stand back encouraging everyone to speak. He or she makes positive comments after the topics have been sufficiently explored by caregivers and at the end of the meeting emphasizes once more the developmentally oriented and optimistic conclusions arrived at by the group itself. New understanding results from a process of exploration in group that draws on personal practical experiences of all those present.
The focus is on creating a space for the participant caregivers to hold meaningful and reciprocate dialogues, not only with each other, but to transfer this also in relation to their children, i.e. to practice listening and responding to their own children, as well as help their children learn to listen and respond to them.