Are Different Professionals Ready to Support Children of Parents with Mental Illness? Evaluating the Impact of a Pan-European Training Programme

• Published in: The journal of behavioral health services & research 2017-04, Vol.44 (2), p.304-315
• Main Authors: Viganò, Giovanni, Kaunonen, Marja, Ryan, Peter, Simpson, Wendy, Dawson, Ian, Tabak, Izabela, Scherbaum, Norbert, Poma, Stefano Zanone
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Addictive behaviors; Attachment; Behavior modification; Child; Child development; Child of Impaired Parents - psychology; Child Welfare; Children; Children & youth; Collaboration; Community and Environmental Psychology; Competence; Drug abuse; Families & family life; Focus groups; Health Informatics; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Health Promotion and Disease Prevention; Health Psychology; Health services; Humans; Intervention; Legal issues; Legal medicine; Medicine; Medicine & Public Health; Mental Disorders; Mental health; Mental health care; Parenthood education; Parents; Parents & parenting; Pilot training; Professional knowledge; Professionals; Psychiatry; Psychologists; Psychosocial Support Systems; Public Health; Questionnaires; Skills; Social Stigma; Social Support; Social workers; Statistical analysis; Stigma; Stigmas (botany); Studies; Substance abuse; Substance-Related Disorders; Surveys and Questionnaires; Teachers; Training; Workers
• ISSN: 1094-3412; 1556-3308
• DOI: 10.1007/s11414-016-9548-1

A training package (pre-tested in a pilot phase) about supporting children who have parents with a mental illness and/or with substance misuse (COPMI) was developed and delivered to 131 different professionals from six different European Countries. A questionnaire about importance, awareness and competence on the issue (8 items on knowledge and 15 items on skills) was developed and completed by participants before and after the training. The training was evaluated by participants as generally very successful in terms of improving the importance, awareness and competence of their knowledge and skills, with a statistically significant difference in the pre-/post-analyses (no decreases occurred). Different professional groups performed differently in the pre-training self-rating scores. The participants in some countries were mainly drawn from one professional group (i.e. teachers in Finland, social workers in Germany and psychologists in Poland). It was found that stigma was considered an extremely important concern even before the training, whilst country-specific legal issues were not taken into proper account in the training. Some possibilities for further refinement of the training programme are suggested.