Objectives
The project „Verrückte Kindheiten“ – „Crazy Childhood“ was initiated by the association of the self-help groups for relatives of persons with a mental illness in Austria (HPE-Österreich) and aims at strengthening the individual resources of children, adolescents and young adults, who have a parent with a mental illness.
The project targets not only young people, whose parents have a psychiatric diagnosis, but also tries to reach those whose parents are not in treatment or do not have a psychiatric diagnosis.
An online platform with a internet forum and a chat room will be created to enable the targeted young people to communicate with each other. This online platform will also be used for providing and disseminating information and education on mental illness in general and specifically concerning the situation of children with a mentally ill parent.
The measures of the project are implemented with user-participation.
Implementation of the evaluation
For a comprehensive evaluation of the project a formative and a summative evaluation is carried out as well as an evaluation of the results, with a specific focus on the active and supportive monitoring of the project process.
At the beginning of the project, aims & planning workshops with the project team will be organised to support the team to specify the objectives and to define indicators for measuring the achievement of the objectives.
In addition, during the entire project reflection meetings are offered in order to discuss emerging themes promptly, reflect on the project implementation and decide on further steps.
The effectiveness of the measures is evaluated by interviewing the internet forum and chat room users with a quantitative online survey. Web statistics will also be used.
In accordance with the participatory approach of the project, the views of the peer steering group be included in the evaluation, using qualitative semistructured interviews.