Early Life Family Care for and With Migrants: The Development of a Transcultural Transition Mentoring Competence Profile

Abstract

Early Life Family Care (ELFC) has so far neglected the needs of migrant families, partly due to professionals’ lack of transcultural knowledge required to address these specific needs. Simultaneously, migrants face employment barriers, including the non-recognition of qualifications and competences. The EU-funded project addressed both these issues by developing an ELFC mentoring training scheme for migrants, who can use their existing and acquired competences to co-operate with parents in challenging transition phases (e.g. becoming new parents). The article discusses one key pillar of the project: the development of a ‘competence profile’. This involved identifying both, ELFC needs of families, which can be addressed by mentoring, as well as the corresponding competences required by mentors. For this purpose, 25 semi-structured interviews with ELFC professionals and migrant parents were conducted. The results show migrant families’ need for skilled support in the management of administrative, interface, relationship, participation and boundary issues.