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

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank all the investigators of the CAMILLE project for their unique and precious contribution without which this study would not have been possible. They are Dr Martin Smith from Middlesex University, London, England; Dr Katja Joronen from the School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Finland; Dr Michael Specka and Dr Christine Auffenberg from the Department of Addiction Medicine and Addictive Behaviour, LVR-Hospital Essen, Hospital of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany; Drs Antonello Grossi, Francesca Siviero and Emanuele Toniolo from the Department of Mental Health of the Local Health Authority of Rovigo, Italy; Dr Simonsen Inger from Nordland Hospital Trust, Bodo, Norway; Drs Czesław Czabał and Lidia Zabłocka-Żytka from the Academy of Special Education, Institute of Applied Psychology, Warsaw, Poland; Drs Alex Baldacchino, Sarah Gray and Catalina Martin from the University of Dundee, Playfield Institute, NHS Fife, Scotland; and Drs Emilio Gregor and Luigi Mauri from Synergia s.r.l., Milan, Italy.

CAMILLE project website: http://mailtodawson.wix.com/camilleproject

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Synergia s.r.l. and Department of Decision Sciences, Università L. Bocconi, Milan, Italy

    Giovanni Viganò BS

  2. School of Health Sciences, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Marja Kaunonen PhD

  3. Middlesex University, London, UK

    Peter Ryan

  4. Dundee, Playfield Institute, NHS Fife, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland

    Wendy Simpson PhD

  5. Nordland Hospital Trust, Bodo, Norway

    Ian Dawson

  6. Department of Child and Adolescent Health, Institute of Mother and Child, Warsaw, Poland

    Izabela Tabak PhD

  7. Department of Addiction Medicine and Addictive Behaviour, LVR-Hospital Essen, Hospital of the University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany

    Norbert Scherbaum PhD

  8. Department of Mental Health of the Local Health Authority of Rovigo, Centro Salute Mentale (ULSS 18), Viale Tre Martiri 89, 45100, Rovigo, Italy

    Stefano Zanone Poma MD PhD

Authors
  1. Giovanni Viganò BS
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  2. Marja Kaunonen PhD
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  3. Peter Ryan
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  4. Wendy Simpson PhD
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  5. Ian Dawson
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  6. Izabela Tabak PhD
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  7. Norbert Scherbaum PhD
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  8. Stefano Zanone Poma MD PhD
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefano Zanone Poma MD PhD.

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Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The CAMILLE project is funded by the DG Justice of the European Commission under the Daphne III programme (JUST/2012/DAP/AG/3336).

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Viganò, G., Kaunonen, M., Ryan, P. et al. Are Different Professionals Ready to Support Children of Parents with Mental Illness? Evaluating the Impact of a Pan-European Training Programme. J Behav Health Serv Res 44, 304–315 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-016-9548-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-016-9548-1

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