Reframing Youth Care / SOEMVA

Why this project?
Children with poorly developed social-emotional skills have a greater chance of ending up in the child protection system. The basis of these social skills is formed between the first and fourth year of life. Children spend most of their time with their parents or guardians at that age. Therefore, they are dependent on the social capabilities of their parents in terms of social skills. Not only the social-emotional competencies of young children but also those of their parents should be encouraged to break this pattern. Garage2020 is working on questions within child protection and asked Reframing Studio to think about this to work together on a possible intervention. The result was SOEMVA.

With Reframing the focus is primarily on creating meaning for people

What does the project entail?
SOEMVA is an interactive concept for parents and children that consists of three game components. They can play this every day in a few minutes. The main objective is the development of the social-emotional skills of children. Because it is an interactive game that parents and children play together, it also has a positive effect on their mutual relationship and the social-emotional skills of the parents. Each game is designed to initiate a simple and short daily routine between parents and children. It focuses on an important part of social-emotional development: positive thinking, self-directing ability and imagination. The idea is that the games can easily find a place in the lives of parents and children.

What is the contribution from and to the creative industry?
Reframing Studio was responsible for both facilitating the design process and designing concepts and prototypes. They did this together with Garage2020 and the Extraordinary Affairs Department. The process consisted of four steps: research, active elements, concept and validation. Lotte Jacobse from Reframing Studio, process supervisor and designer from SOEMVA: “The research was the first step of the process. We tried to understand the future context of social-emotional skills very well. We used the Reframing Method (ViP) for this which revolves around a different way of designing. With classical design methods you quickly focus on the shape of the result. With Reframing that is just secondary and the focus is primarily on creating meaning for people. That gives a lot of freedom. The method also helps to design for the future. If you design something for now, it will soon become obsolete.”

“Using the Reframing Method, we map the future world to better understand in which world we want to develop something. In this process we try to collect objective building blocks for that vision of the future, which describe changing but also stable factors within the domain for which we are going to design. We do literature research and interview various experts from among others psychology, sociology and philosophy for example. Then we make larger stories that show the different directions and trends. This we turn into a framework with the various types of future behavior that arise. Next, together with the project team and the client, we choose the types of behavior that we will design. As a check, we conducted a pilot during the validation phase in which thirty families played SOEMVA every day for forty days.”

And what now?
The SOEMVA development phase has been completed. In consultation with the municipality of Rotterdam, Garage2020 is investigating whether they can realize SOEMVA with (for example) a game manufacturer in a larger circulation and further develop it. Also, Hike One is developing a digital version of SOEMVA, which is currently being tested. Furthermore, SOEMVA is included in an Erasmus MC study among thirty families, in which various interventions are tested concerning raising children. The results of the investigation are expected soon.