CoV-clusion aims to make services better positioned to provide proactive efforts towards families and make societybetter prepared for future crises by increasing our knowledge about how family vulnerability is linked to exclusionprocesses before, during and after Covid-19.
This will be achieved through the objectives addressed in the followingfour scientific working packages: 1) Developing vulnerability profiles (VulProFs) to identify vulnerable families fromdifferent perspectives; 2) Preventing negative effects of changing job demands or job loss; 3) Securing supportiveeducational contexts for children; and 4) Facilitating proactive services.
Theoretically, CoV-clusion builds on The Covid-19 Family Disruption Model introduced by Prime et al. (2020) early inthe pandemic. This framework describes how pre-existing family vulnerability along with social disruption during acrisis may collectively influence parent, child and family wellbeing. We will test this model within the Norwegianwelfare context, and expand it by exploring and nuancing family vulnerability and addressing the role of educationand mental health and support services within the model.
The project will be anchored within the dedicated FamilieForSK research group at the Norwegian Institute of PublicHealth, with a comprehensive and multidisciplinary network of national and international partners. Using thelongitudinal FamilieForSK-study will put CoV-clusion in a unique position to answer questions that are typicallyconfounded by measurement problems. FamilieForSK includes perspectives on family dynamics and wellbeing fromparents, children, family therapists and childcare staff. Families were recruited from family counselling centresacross Norway and have already participated in four waves of data collections. A fifth wave is featured in the CoV-clusion project plan, together with linkages to national Registers to obtain an additional perspective on families’welfare and service use.
