Support for vulnerable families with young children

'Practical Pedagogical Support' and 'Family Support' are the two family-preservation measures in the Social Services Act to which families are most often assigned in Denmark.
This study is one of the first to describe how municipalities realise the two measures and it measures the impact through a randomised controlled trial (RCT study) in which eight municipalities and 43 families took part.
The study shows that the two measures are often used in combination with each other or as a substitute for each other.
The impact measurement shows no significant difference between the effect of 'practical pedagogical support' and 'family support'. This may be because there are not enough families in the study to measure any significant difference. Before-and-after measurements show that all the families underwent a positive development in which, for example, the mothers displayed fewer symptoms of depression and the children displayed less problematic behaviour. These changes cannot, however, be attributed to the measures with any certainty.