This is CHILD

CHILD is a center of collaboration involving researchers from the School of Education and the School of Health sciences at Jönköping university. Researchers from Mälardalen university and Linköping university are associated. In all connecting about 40 professors, senior researchers and doctoral students.

CHILD is an acronym for Children, Health, Intervention, Learning, Development. The primary research focus is on interventions, participation, learning, health and everyday functioning in children with special needs, but also in typically developing children. Factors that influence development, learning and health in children are studied in CHILD. A further purpose is to develop and test research methods for studying complex phenomena such as health and learning. The research is conducted in collaboration between the fields of education, special education, health psychology, health care sciences and disability studies. In CHILD processes and effects are studied from a multi-dimensional perspective letting different perspectives meet, contrast and be enriched by each other.

CHILD has excellent international collaboration  

CHILD is associated with the Swedish Institute for Disability Research (SIDR), a leading European research programme in disability, which is a cooperation between the universities of Linköping and Örebro.  It also has extensive international collaboration, coordinating and participating in a number of EU and international projects. Research is conducted as a part of an active international network that mainly includes Europe, North America and South Africa. The international collaboration involves master education, for example coordinating the EU/US ATLANTIS international consortium for early childhood intervention. It primarily involves research in a number of projects, for example the EU 6th framework Marie Curie Research training network MURINET.

Members of the CHILD group publish frequently in international peer reviewed journals and contribute with chapters in international edited books. Most researchers in CHILD have external funding from Swedish and international research councils.