Denmark 

 Copenhagen

The new Denmark NBO Training Program site has been established under the direction of Inge Nickell and Merethe Winter. To mark this historic occasion, NBO training was offered to Danish health care professionals at Dansk Resources-Denmark, Copenhagen, by Inge and Merethe on January 28-29, 2019.

Training Highlights

Inge Nickell

Merethe Winter and I are thrilled to inform you that we have now delivered training to 293 professionals across Denmark – North, South, East and West! The professionals who have received NBO training have been health visitors, family therapists, psychologists, midwives, pedagogues, psychiatric nurses, maternity nurses and social workers. I have spent much time setting up the NBO site in Copenhagen, Denmark. Together with Merethe, we continue to deliver the training across Denmark and I have been supporting the trainees through e-mail and Skype support as well as certifying the trainees which incorporates a film, as well as the recording forms and parent questionnaires. The Danish NBO Training Centre has now welcomed a new director Jakob Haugaard. Jakob Hougaard is CEO for the Danish nonprofit organization ‘Danish Resources’, managing ‘The Family Project’, a section that provides support to families and help them succeed as parents for their children, and ‘Springboard’, a section that rehabilitates citizens with serious barriers in relation to the job-market. Danish Resources is also contract holder for NBO Denmark. As of 2019 the NGO employs 25 staff members and are one of a few Non-governmental suppliers of these services in the Municipality of Copenhagen. Jakob graduated in anthropology from the University of Copenhagen in 2006. He is former Vice-President of the Social Democratic Youth (DSU), former elected member of the Copenhagen City Council 2002-2019 for the Social Democratic Party. Jakob was elected mayor for the Copenhagen Employment and Integration Department in the period 2005-2009. Merethe Winter is now joining me as Senior Trainer. Merethe has been instrumental in setting up the site, sits on many boards and is an amazing ambassador for everything NBO. Merethe is still working in Thisted as a Health Visitor in the early intervention model: “The Family- growing and developing”. She is the local stakeholder of an interdisciplinary project named “Dads on the Rocks” (fædre på forkant- du oversætter frit).

This project has the father´s relationship to his infant as the cornerstone. Merethe will be presenting the outcomes of the project on a national conference this autumn. Merethe is also an external lecturer at the VIA University College where the HV education in the western part of Denmark is taking place. Currently she is one of two coordinators of a national project called Ambassadors for the Dads, which seeks to integrate the perspective of the Dads much more visible into HV practice. And the latest initiative is the Minding the Baby /Yale University and VIVE) project. Our team is also preparing to welcome the following two healthcare professionals who have been carefully selected due to their expertise in perinatal and infant mental health as well as their passion for NBO: Anna-Katherine Højlan and Pernille Ploug. Anna-Katherine Højland is a Clinical psychologist and Midwife/scanning midwife. Earlier she worked as a clinical psychologist at a family clinic at Hvidovre Hospital, involved in infant and young children´s psychological assessments/examinations. She was supervised monthly through more than 10 years by psychologist Magareta Brodén in Sweden. Anna-Katherine is certified in NBO and has attended NBAS courses. Working with psychotherapy, relationship and infant therapy during the perinatal period, she delivers training and offers supervision for a variety of professionals within the family relationship field. Anna-Katherine is also owner of Psychological Clinic for Pregnant Women, Infants – and Family Relationships. Pernille Ploug is a registered Midwife and has a history of working with vulnerable pregnant women for 16 years, of which 14 of those years was at a family clinic, working with consultant May Olofsson and has been supervised by psychologist Margareta Brodén for 10 years. She is certified in the NBO. She qualified in family relationships & Perinatal Mental Health and worked for 4 years at the Institute of Clinical Psychology at the University of Copenhagen in the Centre for Infants and their Families with NBAS Trainer Hanne Munck. She has been a Lecturer at Metropol for midwifery students for the last 15 years. Currently she is working as a family therapist and midwife at Holmegårdshuset, where she sees all he pregnant families and families with babies. She also works as a pregnancy- and prevention advisor for Reden (the Nest, in Copenhagen.) Reden is a place where some of the most socially disadvantaged and excluded people in the Danish society attend and where the focus is on reducing trauma, recovery and rights. It is for women and when talking about reducing trauma it means reducing the physical, psychological and social traumas which substance abuse and prostitution cause as well as improving the women’s ability to function and her life possibilities.

Future Plans: Camilla Ejlertsen Phd project – We will be delivering NBO training to the first group of maternity nurses, part of Camilla’s project at the end of this month. Camilla is based at Hvidovre Hospital, Copenhagen which is the largest maternity hospital in Denmark. We very much look forward to working together with this hospital. Her project: Protocol for: A family focused and optimized postpartum programme at the Department of Obstetrics and across health care sectors for vulnerable families -a multi-method study of the obstetric care delivered to vulnerable families in order to foster an early healthy relationship formation. I am also very pleased to inform you that Merethe, Jakob and myself will be coming to Brisbane for the WAIMH conference and look forward to the NBO days also. We look forward to introducing Jakob to our NBO family. Aarhus University Research Report by Ingeborg Hedegaard Kristensen In 2019 we published: Kristensen IH, Vinter M, Nickell IK, Kronborg H. Health visitors’ competences before and after implementing the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO) system in a community setting. A cluster randomised study. Public Health Nursing. In 2020, a new article by Kristensen IH, Juul S, Kronborg H. What are the effects of supporting early parenting by the Newborn Behavioral Observations (NBO)? A randomised trial, will appear in BMC Public Health.