K
er
st
in
N
ea
n
d
er
I
nd
isp
en
sa
ble
In
ter
ac
tio
n
issn 1652-4063 isbn 978-91-7668-698-0Kerstin Neander is a social worker and has been the
Director of Gryningen, a centre for parent-child interac-tion interveninterac-tion in Karlskoga, Sweden. The theoretical foundations and the everyday clinical work at the centre have been described in her book Meetings at Gryningen: Experiences of Psychosocial Treatment in Families with Infants and Toddlers. In 2000 she started her doctoral studies at Psychiatric Research Centre in Örebro, which is affiliated to School of Health and Medical Sciences at Örebro University.
Parent-child interaction interventions, guided by the aim of promoting child development, have developed in Sweden during the last three decades. The aim of this thesis was to describe families taking part in such interventions and examine short term and long term changes in their problem loads. Particular interest was directed towards the parents’ experiences, both with respect to the treatment they had taken part in at either of four centres for parent-child interaction interventions presented in this thesis and to other persons and/or contexts the parents considered had played an important and beneficial role for the child or the family.
The results show that the centres have reached both mothers, fathers and children beset by considerable difficulties in relation to interaction, offering them a treatment which an overwhelming majority of the families have chosen to follow through and which has made a difference to the families.
This thesis highlights the significance of beneficial relationships, not only within the intervention but also in other professional contexts, for the en-hancing of children’s development.
Örebro Studies in Medicine 36 örebro 2009
Doctoral Dissertation
Indispensable Interaction
Parents’ perspectives on parent
–child interaction
interventions and beneficial meetings
Kerstin Neander Medicine Örebro StudieS in Medicine 36 2009
