The Welfare Quality and Monitoring Agency (GEV) has completed its audit of the services of the House of Preemies, which was carried out at the request of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labour, the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education and Children. The audit was based on agreement between the three ministers and the House of Preemies on the grant granting for 2024.

Pre-school is a non-profit organization that provides counselling and support to children and young people who have problems with alcohol and drugs, behavioral and emotional problems. Risk behavior is considered as a manifestation of another problem and the activities are based on a holistic approach where the child and parents are worked with to strengthen parents in their parenting role and improve the child’s situation and wellbeing, which reduces risk behavior.

Foreldrahús offers alcohol and drug counselling, parenting and psychological counselling, family counselling and art therapy, as well as the long-term resource WARfare for children in need. Foreldrahús also provides education for professionals and parents of elementary and secondary school students, as well as maintaining a Pre-school phone.

The funding of the activities is based on a contribution from the government, a grant from the welfare department of the City of Reykjavík, self-funding and collecting fees for interviews, which are either paid by users or subsidised by local authorities. In 2024, 715 children and parents applied for interviews at the Parent House, a total of 3,869 interviews. Income in 2024 was about ISK 5m less than the value of the labour contribution for interviews, and total revenue in the year was over ISK 72m.

The review process involved discussions with users of the service, both young people and parents, as well as staff of the Parents’ House and social workers of Reykjavík City, who had experience in referring users to the service.

Key results:

The users and social workers had generally good experience of the service provided by the Pre-school and considered it a key factor in the improvement of the situation of the child and the family, and the child had stopped consumption and other risk behavior.

There is no waiting for the service and the frequency of interviews and length of service is individualized.

The staff of the Pre-school is all professionals and uses evidence based methods.

Only three permanent employees work at Foreldrahús and all of them do professional work with users as well as the manager does other tasks related to the operation. It is therefore a fragile operation. Contractors are sought as necessary.

There is great satisfaction with the comprehensive approach of Foreldrahús, where the emphasis is on working with the cause of a child’s risk behavior in cooperation with the child and parents.

The PURPOSE approach works with heavier issues. Children and parents are each with the counselor, interviews are frequent and the length of service is based on the needs of the child. The approach has been successful to quickly intervene in the child's problem and strengthen parents in their parenting role.

Projects that were previously more pressing in the work, e.g. courses, have been lagging behind, due to work and lack of funding.

There are opportunities for improvements regarding the registration of cases and the communication of written information to other service providers, as well as more systematic use of assessment tools to evaluate the performance and quality of the service.

Services to families can be very costly and most parents said that they would have had a very difficult time or not been able to use the service had it not been for the municipality’s subsidies.

The interviewees repeatedly stated that investment in early intervention such as the services of the Pre-Children’s House is well worthwhile as the problem of the child and family would have grown and ultimately cost the community considerably more.

The report of the GEV on the audit can be accessed (only in Icelandic)