Background and aims:

Outreach services for expectant mothers, parents and children are, amongst others in Scandinavian and Anglo-American countries, an integral component within the framework of parent-child preventive health care programmes. The goal of part VI of the project "Parent-child preventive health care programme" was to give a selected country overview of training, advanced training and professional profiles of outreach services, to provide evidence of the efficacy of outreach services along target group-relevant outcomes for expectant mothers, parents and children, and to illustrate a status quo survey of outreach offers in Austria.

Results:

Starting from the question of training and advanced training possibilities for outreach services, Germany and Austria have shown to provide development curricula for certified caregivers and midwives which particularly emphasize the work with "socially stressed persons, resp., families". Specialisations in specific groups can also be found in Great Britain, Denmark and Sweden, whereby the training and advance training programmes in these countries are also targeted to outreach work with expectant mothers, parents and children "without" risk and stress factors. A literature overview (based on 6 reviews) dealt with the efficacy of outreach services. Evidence of the positive influence of outreach services on children indicated improvements in their cognitive, social and emotional development, respectively, in their physical health. Furthermore, efficacy trends concerning the general physical health of mothers, the progression of post-partum depressions or the quality of the social contacts of mothers were described in the included studies. Outreach services are described as also having a positive influence on mother/parent-child interactions and on the number of children’s accidents. However, the complied end points also show contradictory findings which make further, in-depth research necessary. The questionnaire results outline a "sketch" of outreach offers for expectant mothers, parents and children in Austria. The findings consequently show trends and tendencies (and no representative overview) which place special emphasis on the outreach programmes with information offers, counselling and support services, and interface management to other health care and social professions. Here, the primary target groups are predominantly "both parents", whereby a majority of the offers in the sample focus on "particular" families (with medical and / or socio-medical risk and stress factors). Social workers, psychologists and certified health care personnel were the professional groups most mentioned in connection with the Austrian projects and programmes.