“New Approach to Training Dedicated for Parents of Children With Developmental and Behavioural Disabilities around EUrope”

<< Background >>Recent developments in parenting research and intervention show on how parents can help their children affected by developmental and behavioral disabilities. However, despite the numerous examples and variety of parent training courses (see the multifarious social coaching offers), evidence-based guidelines for designing, implementing and running parent training programmes for parents of children with developmental and behavioral disabilities are not available. Moreover, the relevant in such cases parent training techniques are not widely studied by students in social pedagogy and social worker study programs. It’s worth noting that the profession of coach is in general in many countries still not recognized yet, nor from legislation, neither from the educational public institutions. Universities, except in rare cases and mostly at private universities, snub the coaching phenomenon, presenting coaching in their courses as one of the possible training techniques. The project was designed both for parent of children with developmental disabilities and for social educators and selected social partners.<< Objectives >>The main result is the realization of the evidence-based model for parent training and the learning materials that was made available via the Erasmus+ dissemination platform as well as via the project website. We definitely think that our project concretely satisfied the needs of the the no. 1 target group: parents of childrenwith developmental and behavioral disabilities.<< Implementation >>Following activities was implemented as a part of the project:1. Kick-Off Meeting and Virtual Project Meetings;2. Three Final Conferences for the Target Groups;Two tangible results:RESULT 1 - Design, implementation, and running of the training programme;RESULT 2 - Self-learning electronic compendium;Materials, documents, and media produced are freely available and promoted through open licenses, and does not contain disproportionate limitations.<< Results >>The concrete outputs were:1. The training programme that provided learners with examples, and cases study discussion. Considering the specific aim of our training programme, the learning model was based on the following principles:-Experiential learning;-Opportunity of an immediate applicability of knowledge acquired;-Training participants on contextualized problem solving.2. Evidence-based guidelines for design and running parent training educational programs; this guidelines is a compendium for social educators/facilitators on parent training program that focuses on the use of social learning and online participatory learning; guidelines includes self-evaluation tests. The guideline is available in four(4) EU languages.