New York, NY and Oslo, Norway and London, UK: 19 September, 2012: Confirmit, the leading global software provider for Customer Experience, Employee Engagement and Market Research, has announced that the International Child Development Programme (ICDP) is using the Confirmit Horizons platform to support its work to help vulnerable children around the world. Confirmit has generously donated licences to the charity.

Since 1992, the ICDP has developed a simple, adaptable programme that is used around the world to help children’s caregivers (parents, prospective parents, teachers, facilitators, and professional caregivers) to relate to children in a positive way and to teach children life skills, social behaviour and positive cultural practices. With its roots based firmly in psychology, the programme is built around simple steps that are applicable to vastly differing communities around the world, including families affected by violence, minority groups such as asylum seekers, and communities uprooted by social change.

Nicoletta Armstrong, Chair of the ICDP explains: “We work with charities and communities around the world to train them in the fundamentals of our programme so that they can work with local groups to improve the lives of children through violence prevention, rehabilitation and the prevention of a growing disaffected youth. Our approach provides a very broad reach, but we need to ensure we maintain consistency and quality or many of the benefits will be lost.”

This very de-centralised approach requires diligence and supervision to avoid any dilution of the key principles that could undermine the programme’s effectiveness. The ICDP and Confirmit discussed the possibility of implementing a feedback programme using Confirmit Horizons to gather feedback from all the ICDP-trained users to ensure that the ICDP core principles are maintained. Confirmit was delighted to be able to help and provided a complimentary licence to the platform.

Armstrong continues: “In the past, we’ve had a very ad-hoc approach to gathering feedback from our contacts around the world. It’s been very labour intensive and hasn’t given us a clear picture of what’s really happening, so we’ve not been able to identify the areas where re-training is required. By gathering feedback through Confirmit Horizons we’re beginning to build up that picture and it’s saving us thousands of hours which can then be used on making the improvements we need.”

A pilot programme is currently running in Sweden and Armstrong expects that it will roll out across the world in the near future to ensure that ICDP-accredited instructors in Europe, Africa and South America are all operating to the highest standard, without the need for huge administrative overhead.

Armstrong summarises: “Using Confirmit Horizons is giving us a structure that we’ve just not had before. We know who’s providing the feedback, we have dashboards that enable us to understand the bigger picture, and we’re able to take the right action quickly in places where it’s needed. It’s really going to revolutionise the work we do, and help to ensure that we’re able to continue helping vulnerable children in the most effective way possible.”

Henning Hansen, Confirmit president and chief executive officer, adds: “We are absolutely delighted to help the ICDP achieve its goals and aspirations. While we usually collaborate with our clients to help businesses succeed, with this donation we hope to help communities and families improve their futures. It is crucial that we all do everything we can to help vulnerable children around the world.”

In the future, the ICDP plan is to build a social platform where parents and social workers can communicate and share experiences.  By building up a web based social platform, the ICDP hopes that parents all over the world, with different cultural backgrounds, will have an opportunity to communicate with each other about their parental role.