Children in families experiencing multiple problems: Advancing a main challenge

Children in families with multiple problems are from a child and youth care point of view a very vulnerable target group. Yet we still know relatively little about these families and the effectiveness of interventions for them. What we know from research indicates that most types of intervention have up to now not sufficiently succeeded in facilitating sustainable change for the children in these families. In this paper we propose that this might be due to two main reasons: 1. that most interventions durations are too short to deal with complex problems, and 2. that there is not enough direct support for children in home-based family interventions. Based on research related to Pinkerton’s model of the care continuum we argue for long-term visions on the effectiveness of child care interventions and the implementation of dual care worker approaches, which offer direct support for children at the same time as for the parents. The care activities and outcomes of such interventions need to be monitored by further research.