Promoting children's wellbeing: Professionals' experiences and views on early identification

This study aimed to investigate how professionals working with infants and preschoolers perceive the concept of early identification of children in need of support due to developmental, behavioral, or emotional concerns, which children should be identified and offered support or intervention, and why this should be done. Concerns can typically be associated to risk factors such as, parental mental health problems, relational challenges, or child abuse and neglect. The study was performed in municipalities implementing models inspired by the Getting It Right for Every Child (GIRFEC) framework with the aim of systematically identifying risk factors during the early years and offering preventive and indicated interventions to families. GIRFEC involves a broad collaborative approach including tools and a structure for meetings with both families and professionals.

The study used an exploratory qualitative design with an inductive approach.

Data was collected via semi-structured interviews. Individual face-to-face interviews were conducted with 14 participants from three municipalities and seven organisations or workplaces. The interviews were analysed using thematic analysis.

The analysis resulted in five main themes: 'It's about the parents', 'Focus on child behaviour and development', 'The impact of the relationship', 'Understanding young children is detective work', and 'Consequences of early identification'.

Our findings suggest that professionals are convinced of the meaningfulness of early identification and support, have a strong focus on the child-parent relationship, consider parents the primary road to identifying children at risk and in need of support, and believe that understanding young children calls for interprofessional collaboration.