In 1993-94, Sweden was the first country outside the U.S. to implement the very first version of PRIDE. Swedish municipalities are independent and can use methods of their own choice in assessing and training foster carers. Therefore, the use of PRIDE varies from one municipality/organization to another. A few municipalities still use PRIDE "by the book," including the family assessment, pre-service training and in service training; but most use the PRIDE sessions in preservice and inservice training only while using the old Swedish "Kälvestens method" in different versions for the family assessment.
Region Gävleborg has the copyright for PRIDE in Sweden. We have an annual national training of Pride trainers (for which I am one of the master trainers), but there has been very little development and updating of the material here. We have gotten some from the Norvegians that I have put into our sessions too. I am very envious of Finland and Norway for their way of organizing PRIDE in their countries.
We have approximately 250-300 Pride trainers in Sweden. However, we do not have data regarding the number of foster parents who have been prepared using PRIDE.
On a national level, there is work to develop a training for prospective foster parents in Sweden by Socialstyrelsen. I know that they have looked deeply into the PRIDE material, among other programs. The themes of the PRIDE sessions will surely be used, although they may be updated based upon recent knowledge and research. However, this project is not developing an integrated process for family assessment and training.
No official national results from the implementation of PRIDE have been published. This autumn a new book will be published that includes a comparison of PRIDE and Kälvesten from some perspectives. Small studies have been conducted throughout the years by students at the university concerning the use of PRIDE, but I don´t have an overview of their results. I know that many PRIDE trainers in Sweden use parts of it in other aspects of their work. I also know that many foster parents like having been assessed and trained according to the PRIDE model.
I conduct training with foster carers in my own organization every year, together with a foster father (who was in my very first pilot group in 1994), and it is always a success. People love the activities and the way we work with the difficult topics in the sessions.
Challenges to implementing the whole PRIDE Model of Practice in Swedish municipalities includes difficulties in forming groups of 6-8 families at the same time in order to run a group. Swedish municipalities seldom work together on this and many are too small to make it on their own. Other obstacles have been the costs and forming a team of a social worker and a foster parent as a training team.
AnnMarie Wadenbo, Foster Care Consultant, Senior PRIDE Trainer, Gryning Vard AB, Sweden