Parents' experiences of recieving support through extended home-visits during pregnancy and the child's first fifteen months : Phenomenographic interview study

Background: Parenting is life-changing, a stable and secure social network, and a well-functioning relationship contributes to a positive perceived parenting. It’s essential to be able to adapt parenting support and to discover parents with increased need for support early, in which home-visits can be an important part. This study describes parents' experiences of a care intervention that involves professional support in form of extended home-visits during pregnancy and the child's first fifteen months of life. Aim: To describe parents' experiences of receiving support through extended home-visits during pregnancy and the child's first fifteen months of life. Method: Qualitative study with inductive approach. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted. Phenomenographic method was used for data analysis. Results: Parents' experiences of receiving support through extended home-visits resulted in three categories: The place and form of the meeting are important for parents' sense of coherence; Home-visits promote parents' sense of security and strengthen the parental role; Home-visits promote parental involvement, integration and relationships. Parents described that everything fell into place and became more real when they received support at home. Conclusion: Home-visits and support in the home environment increased parents' sense of coherence, participation, sense of security and strengthened their role as parents

Parents' experiences of recieving support through extended home-visits during pregnancy and the child's first fifteen months : Phenomenographic interview study

Background: Parenting is life-changing, a stable and secure social network, and a well-functioning relationship contributes to a positive perceived parenting. It’s essential to be able to adapt parenting support and to discover parents with increased need for support early, in which home-visits can be an important part. This study describes parents' experiences of a care intervention that involves professional support in form of extended home-visits during pregnancy and the child's first fifteen months of life. Aim: To describe parents' experiences of receiving support through extended home-visits during pregnancy and the child's first fifteen months of life. Method: Qualitative study with inductive approach. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted. Phenomenographic method was used for data analysis. Results: Parents' experiences of receiving support through extended home-visits resulted in three categories: The place and form of the meeting are important for parents' sense of coherence; Home-visits promote parents' sense of security and strengthen the parental role; Home-visits promote parental involvement, integration and relationships. Parents described that everything fell into place and became more real when they received support at home. Conclusion: Home-visits and support in the home environment increased parents' sense of coherence, participation, sense of security and strengthened their role as parents

Parents' Experiences of Receiving Professional Support Through Extended Home Visits During Pregnancy and Early Childhood : A Phenomenographic Study

Background: While becoming a parent can be challenging for all, it can particularly be challenging for those parents and children who are in a vulnerable situation—e.g., in families whose members have problems related to health, relationships, or socioeconomic status. It is essential for health care professionals to identify the more vulnerable families at an early stage. Home visits are one cost-effective way of identifying and supporting such families. This study describes the parental experiences of an intervention that involves professional support in the form of extended home visits. The aim of the study is to describe the parents' understanding of their experiences of receiving professional support through extended home visits both during pregnancy and the first 15 months of their child's life. Methods/Design: A phenomenographic approach was used. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 parents who had received the intervention. The interviews were analyzed using the seven-step phenomenography model described by Sjöström and Dahlgren. Results: The following three descriptive categories emerged from the analysis: (1) conceptions concerning the meaning of the physical environment, (2) conceptions concerning extended home visits promoting feelings of self-confidence in the parental role, and (3) conceptions concerning extended home visits promoting parental participation and relations. Conclusion and Clinical Implications: Extended home visits as a form of professional support appear to promote parental self-confidence in parenting ability, giving parents a feeling of security that facilitates conversation with professionals. Children and their entire families had natural roles during home visits, which allowed the children to behave more characteristically. Furthermore, the home visits were understood to facilitate social support through social activities at the child health center as well as integration into Swedish society for migrant parents. Professional support should be adjusted to the unique individual needs of parents, which demands a variety of supportive interventions—for example, reorganizing one or two of the regular clinical visits currently being scheduled as home visits instead.CC BY 4.0© Copyright © 2021 Bäckström, Thorstensson, Pihlblad, Forsman and Larsson.This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY)Correspondence: Caroline Bäckström [email protected]</p