European Incredible Years® Network for Implementation and Research

Thirty-two people from Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Netherlands, Portugal, Scotland, Slovenia, England and Wales met late May in Bergen, Norway to discuss new research with IY programs and dissemination principles. I (Carolyn) am delighted to meet these researchers, administrators and IY mentors and to talk with them about grant deadlines, translations, research measures and new studies.

There are many presentations about promising new studies. Brenda Renz, IY parent mentor from Scotland, describes their plan for motivating high risk parents of 4-year old children by providing IY Basic Parent Training. 786 families have been enrolled and pre, post–data shows that 81% of parents had improved behavior problem scores and 62% of children had moved out of the clinical range.

Marija Anderluh, a child psychiatrist from Slovenia, discussed her efforts to bring the Incredible Years parent program to her country. Already 20 groups leaders have been trained and they are offering 10 parent groups!

Frances Gardner from Oxford University presented pooling data from 14 trials across Europe about who benefits the most from IY Parenting programs to reduce disruptive child behavior. She discussed the effects of poverty, joblessness, parent mental health, child comorbid problems, ethnicity and geographical location on outcomes.

Piia Karjalainen presented her doctoral research design to evaluate the IY Parent program for child welfare referred families.

Finally, I am able to introduce Wally’s mother, Carmen Communicator, to present information about the birth of three new Incredible Years® programs – one for day care providers of young children (1-5 years), another for parents with children on the autism spectrum, and a third for preschool teachers working with children with language delays as well as children on the spectrum.

The European IY Network (EIY Network) is comprised of IY implementors, researchers, and IY experts from across Europe. The EIY Network aims to do the following:

• Network with each other to form a supportive IY community throughout Europe to promote IY implementation with fidelity.
• Share idea and experiences with implementation and research in IY series.
• Generate and expand upon new ideas and initiatives, and apply for funding, in order to contribute to future research of IY.
• Share expertise and experiences of IY to inform policies and practice in their own countries.
• Discuss needs and opinions in order to devise common formulations, and bring those to the attention of the Incredible Years® Headquarters in Seattle.

This is an exciting group and I am so pleased to see how they have taken the collaborative process to the next level. The pooled data study Frances presented points the way to how collaborative research can enhance our understanding of how IY programs can help families of all cultures, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds.

Written by Carolyn Webster-Stratton