Video-feedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline

One of CIF's newer research projects is ”An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Pedagogues Promoting Positive Parenting in a Home-visiting Program in At-risk Families”.

The project is a collaboration between CIF and two Danish municipalities. The aim is to evaluate both the implementation and the efficacy of the attachment based intervention ”Video-feedback Intervention to Promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline” (VIPP-SD).

The purpose of VIPP-SD is to improve parents’ relationship with their children, by promoting parental sensitivity in caregiving. The intervention is aimed at families with children between 1-5 years old, identified to be at-risk. As a new innovative initiative, the intervention will be delivered by pedagogues at home-visits. The pedagogues will be trained so they are equipped to undertake the teaching of the parents, and during the project the pedagogues will be supervised by the municipalities’ psychologists at the social authorities (in Danish Pædagogisk Psykologisk Rådgivning, PPR). This way, VIPP-SD will contribute to the enhancement of cross-disciplinary collaborations, as well as promoting a common language and understanding of early intervention. 

In total, 40 pedagogues and 4 PPR psychologists will be certified in VIPP-SD, and 206 families will be included in the study. Based on randomization, half of the families will receive VIPP-SD, and half of the families will receive the preventive interventions which are currently offered by the municipalities.

Evidence from this study will provide new knowledge about:

  • Whether or not VIPP-SD, delivered by pedagogues, will promote parents’ sensitivity and children’s development
  • Which families may benefit from a pedagogue delivered VIPP-SD intervention, and which families may not.
  • Whether VIPP-SD functions in a Danish context
  • How pedagogues and parents experience working together through the VIPP-SD intervention.

The project starts in 2019 and ends in 2024. It is funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark - Humanities (in Danish Forskningsrådet for Kultur og Kommunikation, FKK) with 5.903.070 DKK.