"The purpose of the project 'Secure Parents – Brave Children' is to empower parents of children between 5 and 18 years old by developing an app/guide with tailored, flexible, and knowledge-based information for parents who are concerned about their child or teenager," says Martinsen.
Parent assistant
She further explains that in this way, parents become better equipped to help their child and primary healthcare workers get a tool that can be used in conversations with parents.
According to Martinsen, there is significant pressure on support services. Issues such as anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, and school dropout are common. Many children and young people do not receive the help they need due to the high demand on support services. Primary healthcare is supposed to offer support to children with mild and moderate issues, but these services also face time constraints and limited opportunities to offer parents conversations, so they can better support the work school health workers are doing with children in school health care.
The app is intended as a low-threshold and preventive measure, which is important to prevent further development of difficulties, emphasizes Martinsen.
"With this grant, we are well on our way to completing a prototype with information conveyed through text, audio, animations, and videos, which can be tested by parents and school health nurses," she states.
Language detective
Julien Mayor, for his part, is soon ready to launch a language development tool on the market. The app has already received some attention in Norwegian, with a project funded with a SPARK Social Innovation grant.
The project he now receives funding for, "TLex – Towards large-scale and unbiased online language screening," aims to identify and address language delays and impairments in early childhood effectively and directly from the child, without relying on parents.
“We will investigate and develop an innovative, browser-based online assessment tool, T-Lex, which offers a direct, efficient, and scalable method for early detection of language delays in young children,” says Mayor, adding,
“The main hope is that T-Lex can provide a reliable, unbiased assessment that overcomes the limitations of current screening methods, such as parental biases and socioeconomic barriers.”
They are now planning to take T-Lex from concept to market by first validating its effectiveness through extensive pilot testing and establishing norms across diverse populations.
“This project seeks to establish T-Lex as a large-scale screening tool that can be effectively utilised by early childhood education centres and healthcare providers to ensure early intervention and support for children with language delays, ultimately maximising their developmental potential,” explains Mayor.
He is pleased that the University of Oslo is focusing on innovation ideas.
“Receiving this grant validates our hard work and dedication towards developing innovative tools, motivating us to continue making a tangible difference in early childhood development,” concludes the psychology professor.
Two out of ten projects to PSI
Both projects at the Department of Psychology are supported with 400,000 NOK each. In total, 10 projects across the entire University of Oslo were awarded funding for the test and further development phase by the University of Oslo.