Prenatal stress and early childhood experiences of psychosocial stress can have lifelong health consequences for affected children. Despite the existence of various support services, these services are not always utilized well, especially by families who have a high need for support. The intervention “Babylotse” [engl. Baby pilot] consists of a screening system to connect stressed families with various help settings, according on the needs of the fam-ily. The present quasi-experimental study investigated the effectiveness of this intervention by examining the children’s quality of life one year after taking part in the intervention. The physical development of N = 129 children, as well as the social and living space of the family, were examined, by a nurse at the family’s homes. Parents were interviewed beforehand about their living situation on the phone. There were no significant differ-ences between the children in the intervention group consisting of psychosocial significant stressed families ac-cording to the screening and the control group consisting of families not burdened by psychosocial stress, which suggests the positive effect of the intervention by making up for the existing deficits.
Prenatal stress and early childhood experiences of psychosocial stress can have lifelong health consequences for affected children. Despite the existence of various support services, these services are not always utilized well, especially by families who have a high need for support. The intervention “Babylotse” [engl. Baby pilot] consists of a screening system to connect stressed families with various help settings, according on the needs of the fam-ily. The present quasi-experimental study investigated the effectiveness of this intervention by examining the children’s quality of life one year after taking part in the intervention. The physical development of N = 129 children, as well as the social and living space of the family, were examined, by a nurse at the family’s homes. Parents were interviewed beforehand about their living situation on the phone. There were no significant differ-ences between the children in the intervention group consisting of psychosocial significant stressed families ac-cording to the screening and the control group consisting of families not burdened by psychosocial stress, which suggests the positive effect of the intervention by making up for the existing deficits.