Supporting Families for Nurturing Care

Supporting families of young children before birth and during the child’s first years is of great importance. It can result in life long benefits for children, communities, societies and nations. Home-visiting programs in particular have been found to increase parental wellbeing and parenting efficacy, as well as child outcomes.

Home visitors can help deliver personalized care and assistance directly to families and communities in need. However, in many countries in Europe and Central Asia home visits that are provided through the health sector are often narrowly focused on physical health and medical content, do not reach the most vulnerable and are not tailored to the specific needs and circumstances of individual families.


ISSA and UNICEF ECARO collaborated to develop a Resource Package, which draws on the most recent scientific evidence and the Nurturing Care Framework (The Lancet, 2016)


The 24 modules in the package have been developed through a consultative process which involved more than 20 national and international experts, including front line workforce – the home visiting patronage nurses. The modules, address topics not routinely covered in pre-service or in-service nursing and medical education, and empower home visitors to take a strengths-based approach that promotes nurturing care and relationships between the caregiver and the child.

The modules are accompanied by supporting tools, urging the learner to actively engage in reflection and delivering guidance on the knowledge, skills, attitudes and practices required for home visitors in their new and enriched role.

What's been accomplished so far?

• Some 100 Master trainers were trained in more than 16 countries in Europe and Central Asia.
• The modules appeared in several languages, such as: Albanian, Georgian, Kazakh, Russian, Serbo-Croatian-Bosnian-Montenegrian, Turkmen, Uzbek and Arabic.

Jon Korfmacher said in Zero to Three Journal (March 2018): 'This package is innovative because modules are deliberately made as a living and evolving documents, open to be translated and adapted to the local context of the country. They are flexible, with the ability to be incorporated into higher education requirements, or to be used in in-service training.'

'They appeal to many types of professionals in the early childhood field (physicians, social workers, educators, etc.). Also, the modules and the training approach has been designed to increase adherence to the content and format of the modules (e.g. reflective questions, exercises, short quizzes); it reflects the way that home visitors are ‘to be’ with families.'

ISSA is able to offer training based on the resource package. The training modules refer to key aspects of young child development and wellbeing which - in most countries - are not covered in the basic pre-and in-service training for home visiting staff.

For whom?
If you are home visitor, healthcare worker, in-service trainer, psychologist, social worker, Roma/health mediator, UNICEF and other active international agencies staff, a member of an NGO or activist group.

We can deliver a tailor made training to meet your professional development needs.

The training is:

1. Organized and delivered in a participatory and interactive way and includes small group work, role play, simulations and working on case studies.
2. Designed to advance knowledge, skills, attitudes and practices of home visitors and to enrich their engagement with the families of young children.
3. A meeting place for professionals coming from different sectors and institutions.

By following the training you will:

• Learn to use the conceptual framework of the package
• Enrich knowledge on the expanded role of home visitors
• Move from theory to practice, gain interactive training skills
• Reflect on the content of the modules and effective training skills
• Receive mentoring in person/online after the training or for adapting the modules
• Receive assistance during the roll-out of the resource package as needed, in-person or online
• Review and get feedback on adapted modules and/or implementation plans
• Learn to create implementation plans for home visitors
• Get recommendations for improvement of existing preservice curricula for home visitors

Request training