Strengthening communities to put kids first in Norway

Recommendations and results from CEI Nordic’s Kids First project, funded by Kavli Trust, are forging a path for local communities to positively impact thousands of young lives.

Working for multiple years across three local government areas in Norway, Kids First takes a long-term, early intervention view, anchored in global and local research.

“Helping one child or one family is of course important, supporting a few is even better. But if we can influence a whole community – through collaboration and encouragement – that makes it possible to impact entire cohorts of children,” says Professor Arild Bjorndal, Director of CEI Nordic. “System-level impact means we can set and carry forward ambitious goals across a local area.”

“Our aim is to create optimal conditions for all children.”

Several recommendations have been outlined from the Kids First work to date, and these will be relevant for most Norwegian municipalities. Recommendations include:

• Strengthening the support system around children at all stages of development
• Promoting strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses – in individuals, families and local systems
• Enhancing collaboration with parents – expecting a lot of them, but also providing useful tools and extra support when needed
• Strengthening partnerships with business and volunteer organisations
• Increasing the participation of children, young people and parents in decision-making

Kids First fosters a holistic, systematic and long-term approach, bringing together a wide range of community stakeholders in each municipality — leaders, employees, volunteers, parents and young people – to collaboratively develop local improvements and solutions.

“Through dialogue and a shared commitment to finding solutions, the team develops local ‘missions’,” Arild explains. “These are identified areas of need that can be met with development projects spanning the whole municipality. Children and young people have a seat at the table and can be part of robust debate and planning.”

An important part of CEI’s role is to provide an external, evidence-informed perspective, compiled from documentation, statistics, interviews with local stakeholders and other relevant research. By analysing locally developed solutions against this evidence-base and established criteria, stakeholders are in a much better position to identify effective and workable ways forward.

“By spending time together, our CEI team and the local stakeholders build a culture of mutual trust. A central tenet of this work is uniting local resources to achieve common goals, guided by the notion, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’,” says Arild.

Three examples show the breadth of activity stemming from Kids First:

Strengthening parent collaboration across municipalities

“Parents are central to children's lives, and effective parent engagement is key to early intervention as challenges arise in a child's upbringing,” Arild notes. “So, it is not surprising that strengthening parent collaboration is a priority area for all the municipalities involved in Kids First.”

In Hå municipality, for instance, kindergartens are now taking a more active role in involving parents, to foster a stronger sense of partnership between families and professionals. The three Kids First municipalities are also working together to share best practices and create toolkits to enhance parent engagement in new ways.

The important role of business and volunteers

Results from Kids First underscore the importance of involving business and volunteer organisations in local development efforts. This has led to initiatives like the Important Adults project in Gausdal municipality, which aims to normalise typical struggles and support children in developing resilience. Parents and children are provided with a common language and understanding to tackle everyday challenges.

A focus on multiculturalism

With Norwegian municipalities seeing a growing number of young people from culturally diverse backgrounds, initiatives focused on inclusion and preventing marginalisation have become a point of increasing focus. Building on Kids First, the Gjesdal municipality has launched the Multicultural Upbringing-project, in which young people are involved in shaping integration and inclusion solutions.

“Working with the three local communities has been immensely energising,” says Arild. “Everyone has learned so much about the importance of focusing on children's strengths and needs, and about the powerful effect created when people come together with a shared purpose.”

“The willingness to together identify and deal with challenges early on will strengthen the efforts of local communities to support children and young people – resulting in more robust, safe and happy kids.”