Childhood and youth: training for the prevention and management of risk behaviours in Chile
The training programme has been designed by Dianova Chile to incorporate both academic and practical experience, giving the whole process rigour and applicability – Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash
By Marco Antonio del Río, Training Director, Dianova Chile – Dianova Chile has just completed the first phase of an important training initiative, the result of a national call for tenders organized by the National Service for the Specialized Protection of Children and Adolescents, Mejor Niñez of Chile.
We participated in this process with three training programmes and won the three initiatives presented: Life course approaches, Focus on substance use and specialization course on treatment, and Approaches and strategies for substance use and dependence. Almost five hundred professionals joined the sessions including therapists and managers from all over the country, from the National Child Protection Services, and other collaborating entities, such as third sector institutions dedicated to addressing children’s needs.
The topics addressed in this process included: family resilience, adolescence, impact of drugs on the nervous system, developmental trajectories and life course, protection aspects from a legal perspective, adherence to treatment, treatment models, and cycles/stages of substance use.
To achieve the learning objectives, we assembled a team of international teachers selected from our own teams and network.
During the first phase, we’ve been able to count on assistant professors, associates and/or collaborators including Dr Carmen Gloria Jiménez, Dr Ana Castro Ríos, Dr.Mauricio Valenzuela Harrington, Dr Eugenio Saavedra Guajardo and Dr Pablo Kurlander Perrone (Brazil/Uruguay), professionals from various disciplines (social work, psychology, education, law, biology, psychiatry, occupational therapy), including María Soledad Moreno, Noemí Galaz Acevedo, Nora Vela Parodi (Uruguay), Constanza Méndez, Javier Lepe Honores, María Eugenia Diamante (Argentina), Claudio Berríos Bravo, Isabel Novoa Aravena, Pamela Henríquez Rojas, Ricardo Allendes Nava (Venezuela/Chile) and Sebastián Ramírez Escudero.
Methodologically speaking, we’ve combined academic and practical experience, giving the process rigour and applicability. The training programme was carried out online, with live sessions via Zoom or through Dianova’s platform www.dianovalive.org – our target audience being located throughout the country, from Arica in the far north of Chile to Punta Arenas in the south. We also emphasized the practical nature of the process with case analyses carried out by our team, as well as the experience of participants.
Inauguration of the session’s second cohort, on 20 October, in the presence of Almendra Fernández of the specialised unit “Mejor Niñez – screen capture: Dianova Chile
In this context, especially during the specialisation course, group and individual application projects were developed, addressing various themes based on the participants’ practices. These initiatives will be implemented during the first semester of 2023, in a second phase in which will participate Dr Gisela Hansen Rodríguez from Dianova Spain, Dr Sonia Vélez Báez from Mexico, Dr Rodrigo Moreno from Argentina and Dr Antonio Molina from Spain.
The management of the project and the process was carried out from Chile by the professionals of Dianova Chile: Rodrigo Sanhueza Rojas (programme director), Héctor Olea León (quality manager) and Marco Antonio del Río (training director).
Lastly, we would like to emphasize that this endeavour was primarily based on our professional and organizational skills, in an area that is often talked about without necessarily being reflected in practice. We would like to thank the representatives of the Mejor Niñez Service for this opportunity and for the trust they placed in us.
