support from the start project

relevance of research study

Key Questions:

  • How does Scotland support our children to be healthy and happy?
  • How can this outcome be achieved for the most vulnerable children who come from deprived socio-economic circumstances?

Answer: Resilient Communities

  • The view of the scientific community is now robust and indicates that chronically raised stress is associated with deprived socio-economic circumstances.
  • Antonovsky’s concept of creating health through supporting individuals to understand their social environment, and to take control of it, seems an important mechanism for reducing stress.
  • Improving Scotland’s health should, therefore, involve
  • Developing methods to increase resilience in our young people, and
  • Supporting adults who lack the incentives to engage with their social environment to do so.
  • This view focuses on an assets model, which accentuates positive capability within individuals and supports them to identify problems and activate their own solutions to problems they themselves identify.
  • This view encourages the full participation of local communities in the health development process.
  • The Scottish Government’s Equally Well National Programme is based on these principles.
  • East Lothian’s Equally Well test site is called “Support from the Start”

Aims

We aim to understand the resilience of parents attending “Support from the Start”[1]i.e.

  1. Which groups are attended by the most resilient parents
  2. Which groups are attended by the least resilient parents
  3. What aspects of resilience does “Support from the Start” need to focus on to enhance parent resilience (in order to achieve the principles of The Scottish Government’s Equally Well National Programme).

ObjectiveS: What will we find out about our parents’ resilience?

The analysis will identifydifferent elements of parental resilience for each “Support from the Start” Group, namely:

Community

  • Are parents connected with their friends, family and neighborhood?
  • How do parents find and use resources and services to meet their everyday needs?

Individual

  • How do the parents live their life and what do they believe to be important?
  • What the parents think about themselves and the way they do things.

Methodology

We intend to pilot a self-report tool that has been developed by Queen Margaret University to better understand resilience at an individual and community level.

We will trial the tool with a representative sample of parents of children from pre-birth to 8 years of age, who are attending local Support from the Start initiatives.

We will better understand community and individual resilience issues byanalysing the responses given by parents in the self-report tool. The questions are framed positively and participants are asked to answer on a scale of 1-4 (1= low resilience, 4= high resilience). For instance:

RESILIENCE ISSUE / SUPPORT FROM THE START GROUP EVALUATION
COMMUNITY
Are parents connected with their friends, family and neighborhood? / Score of 3 or 4 on the scale
i.e. This is an asset:Group should be explicitly reflective about how this characteristic can support the health of their children / Score of 1 or 2 on the scale
i.e. This needs attention: How can the “Support from the start” group be more effective connecting people with their social networks? (consider questions)
How do parents find and use resources and services to meet their everyday needs? / Score of 3 or 4 on the scale
i.e. This is an asset:Group should be explicitly reflective about how this characteristic can support the health of their children / Score of 1 or 2 on the scale
i.e. This needs attention: How can the “Support from the start” group be more effective in supporting parents find and use resources and services? (consider questions)
INDIVIDUAL
How do the parents live their life and what do they believe to be important? / Score of 3 or 4 on the scale
i.e. This is an asset:Group should be explicitly reflective about how this characteristic can support the health of their children / Score of 1 or 2 on the scale
i.e. This needs attention: How can the “Support from the start” group be more effective in supporting parents think about how they live their life and what they believe is important differently? (consider questions)
What the parents think about themselves and the way they do things? / Score of 3 or 4 on the scale
i.e. This is an asset:Group should be explicitly reflective about how this characteristic can support the health of their children / Score of 1 or 2 on the scale
i.e. This needs attention: How can the “Support from the start” group be more effective in supporting parents? (consider questions)

The evaluation will provide “Support from the Start” with a framework for how to:

  • Support parental resilience more effectively and
  • More effectively target issues which are likely to increase parental resilience.

This is in line with the principles of Equally Well National Programme.

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[1] In order to achieve aim 1, the resilience tool will need to be submitted to reliability and validity testing.