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HELSEVEL-Gode og effektive helse-, omsorgs- og velferdstjenester

Improving Services’ Proactive Efforts: The Impact of Covid-19 and Vulnerability on Exclusion from Health and Welfare (CoV-clusion)

Alternative title: Bedre grunnlag for proaktive tjenester: Lærdom fra før, under og etter Covid-19 om familiers sårbarhet og eksklusjon fra helse og velferd

Awarded: NOK 12.0 mill.

Project Manager:

Project Number:

325977

Application Type:

Project Period:

2021 - 2026

Subject Fields:

Partner countries:

The Covid-19 pandemic changed society overnight. The public health measures implemented to curb the spread of infection caused increased stress, loneliness and worry for many, potentially starting or escalating processes of exclusion from health and welfare that will continue after the pandemic. CoV-clusion aims to make services better positioned to provide proactive efforts and make society better prepared for future crises by increasing our knowledge about how family vulnerability is linked to exclusion processes before, during and after Covid-19. This knowledge will contribute to achieve four objectives: 1) Developing vulnerability profiles (VulProFs) to identify vulnerable families from various perspectives; 2) Preventing potential negative effects of changing job demands or job loss; 3) Securing supportive educational contexts for children; and 4) Facilitating proactive help and welfare services. Beyond the potential scientific impact, knowledge from CoV-clusion may have a large societal impact. Using this knowledge, legislators and policy makers will be better placed to make informed decisions, while service providers and schools will be better positioned to meet the needs of families and children. Long-term benefits for families may also include getting easier access to, and by being reached more readily by, relevant services. CoV-clusion is anchored within the dedicated FamilieForSK research group at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, with a comprehensive network of national and international partners. The FamilieForSK data includes perspectives on family dynamics and wellbeing from parents, children, family therapists and childcare staff. Families were recruited from family counselling centres across Norway and have at the time of writing participated in six data collection waves. The sixth wave is featured in the CoV-clusion project plan, together with linkages to national Registers to obtain an additional perspective on families’ welfare and service use.

CoV-clusion aims to make services better positioned to provide proactive efforts towards families and make society better prepared for future crises by increasing our knowledge about how family vulnerability is linked to exclusion processes before, during and after Covid-19. This will be achieved through the objectives addressed in the following four scientific working packages: 1) Developing vulnerability profiles (VulProFs) to identify vulnerable families from different perspectives; 2) Preventing negative effects of changing job demands or job loss; 3) Securing supportive educational contexts for children; and 4) Facilitating proactive services. Theoretically, CoV-clusion builds on The Covid-19 Family Disruption Model introduced by Prime et al. (2020) early in the pandemic. This framework describes how pre-existing family vulnerability along with social disruption during a crisis may collectively influence parent, child and family wellbeing. We will test this model within the Norwegian welfare context, and expand it by exploring and nuancing family vulnerability and addressing the role of education and mental health and support services within the model. The project will be anchored within the dedicated FamilieForSK research group at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, with a comprehensive and multidisciplinary network of national and international partners. Using the longitudinal FamilieForSK-study will put CoV-clusion in a unique position to answer questions that are typically confounded by measurement problems. FamilieForSK includes perspectives on family dynamics and wellbeing from parents, children, family therapists and childcare staff. Families were recruited from family counselling centres across Norway and have already participated in five waves of data collections. A sixth wave is featured in the CoV-clusion project plan, together with linkages to national Registers to obtain an additional perspective on families’ welfare and service use.

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Funding scheme:

HELSEVEL-Gode og effektive helse-, omsorgs- og velferdstjenester