An exciting agreement has been entered into between Vestlandets Innovationsselskap - VIS, Helse Bergen and Youwell with the aim of providing earlier help and support for children's mental health already in kindergarten.
After participating in a simplified tender, Youwell and VIS have entered into an agreement for the delivery of an online application for "PRO-DIALOG (Promoting mental health in young children – a dialogue based approach in kindergartens)".
"We are already well underway with the research part of PRO-DIALOG, where we are testing how well the method works in regular kindergartens and the results so far are very promising," says child and adolescent psychiatrist and professor Ingvar Bjelland, who has developed the method in collaboration with kindergarten teachers and parents in 8 different kindergartens in Bergen.
"We now need a digital version that can easily be used in regular kindergartens and that is what we hope that YouWell can help us with. In the next phase, we also want to develop an online training module that will be self-instructional for the kindergarten teachers and parents" continues Bjellaland.
The aim of the acquisition is therefore to create a user-friendly platform for the digital implementation of the PRO-DIALOG method, where the half-yearly development interview is used to have a clearer focus on the mental health of the child. Before the interview, the kindergarten teacher and the parents answer the same questions about possible concerns they already have for the child and possible reasons for them. Instead of just a report from the nursery teacher on how the nursery experiences the child, the conversation should be a more equal dialogue where together you can try to find out how to understand the child's possible challenges.
In this important preventive work, Youwell will develop the first version of the web application for the PRO-DIALOG project. In the solution, the answers to the questions before the conversation will be recorded, in addition to what is concluded during the conversation about any concerns and what measures for help and support are planned to be implemented.
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