Reducing inequalities in children’s health care in Østfold County, Norway

The municipality of Fredrikstad is testing this small-scale, randomized controlled trial project in a child health care centre situated in a part of the city comprising families of different socioeconomic status. Children born between 1 November 2015 and 31 October 2016 are included in the project.

The Government offers parents 10 visits during the child's first year. One is a home visit 14 days after the child is born. This project offers 2 additional home visits (at 3 months and 15 months) and 2 evening courses (at 9 months and 21 months). Parenting courses are based on principles from the International Child Development Programme, and the first parenting course will be held in August 2016.

Parents are asked to fill out questionnaires regarding their own and the child's situation – on child development, social-emotional challenges, how the mother/father experiences the child health care centre, and how the mother/father feels and copes in different situations – at the start of the project and during the follow-up period.

Initial reports from public health nurses involved in the project suggest that they sometimes find that the time they spent on well-adjusted families should have been spent with families in need of extra support. They have also discovered families that they did not know had challenges and struggled, until they conducted the additional home visits. The project managers hope to be able to follow the children into kindergarten and school, to explore the possible positive long-term effects of the project.