Profound intellectual and multiple disabilities and Motor activation, Dementia and Physical activity

Child and family welfare services
Families experiencing multiple problems

Demedicalisation and normalisation of challenging child behaviors
Dealing with challinging child behaviors

- Giftedness
- Twice-exceptional
- Special educational needs

The history of child protection and its institutions, history of the supervision order, history of out of home placement of minors.
Archives of professors, history of psychological and pedagogical testing and testmaterials.

Inclusive and special needs education, social participation, well-being, special educational needs,  social- emotional and/or behaviour difficulties, creating an optimal educational environment

Educational Innovations
Active Learning and Active Learning Spaces / Classrooms
Soundscape Research
Special Needs Education

Early Assessment and Intervention, Learning Disabilities, Motor Development, Pediatric Health Psychology, Dance Movement Therapy

Expertise over de ontwikkeling van het kind in dynamische interactie met met de omgeving. Thema's: leerkracht-leerlinginteracties, leren in de diverse klas, eerste en tweede taalverwerving, problemen in de vroegkinderlijke ontwikkeling, de ontwikkeling van het creatief denken, variabiliteit van gedrag, gedragsobservatie, procesonderzoek, complexe dynamische systemen.

Docent binnen de volgende vakken:
* Supervisie masterstage
* Casuïstiek
* Stageterugkomdagen
* Klinische orthopedagogische vaardigheden, oplossingsgericht werken
* Diagnostiek en behandeling
* Orthopedagogische reflecties een brug tussen theorie en Praktijk

My expertise and interest are LGBTQIA+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual/Aromantic and questioning) children and youth in the child protection system (CPS). I am currently working on the Audre project which focuses on the experiences of LGBTQIA+ youth from their own perspective and also from their carers and professionals` perspective. 

More specifically, my research focuses on the resilience, personal and community-based, of LGBTQIA+ youth in the CPS.

Other topics: Child and family welfare; inequalities in child protection;  family foster care; residential child and youth care; LGBTQIA+ youth in care; participation of children and families in the child protection system. 

Child welfare, foster care, child maltreatment, violence, trauma, children's voices, qualitative research methods

Learning Disabilities, Dyslexia, SLI, ADHD, Eye Tracking, EEG, fMRI, SPSS, E-Prime, Matlab, MLA, PCA, CFA, Borland Delphi, C++, VBA, MPlus

Unaccompanied minor refugees, transition to adulthood

Katrien Helmerhorst works as an assistant professor at the unit of Child and Family Welfare. Her research has a focus on three main topics: 1) parenting behavior of (professional) caregivers, 2) early childcare centers, and 3) effectiveness of parenting interventions. A common thread in her research is observing a wide range of parenting behaviors (e.g., sensitivity, challenging parenting behavior, mind-mindedness, language and developmental stimulation, parent-child attachment relationship).

In 2014, she completed her PhD at the department of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam (UvA). During her PhD, she developed and evaluated an intervention program (video-feedback training) for professional caregivers in center based child care. During her first postdoc at the UvA, she obtained a subsidy granted by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment to develop and test effectiveness of an intervention program for caregiver training in vocational education. In 2017, Helmerhorst started a second postdoc at the Department of Sociology (Family sociology) Erasmus University Rotterdam within an interdisciplinary research team in which the family is investigated within its wider context, such as the influence of socio-economic status (diversity, intergenerational transmission of inequality, policy (parental leave), and gender ideologies of men and women in modern society. She was the lead investigator of the 3HOEK study (VIDI & ERC Starting Grant by Prof. dr. Renske Keizer), which follows 104 families (fathers, mothers, and 3-year-olds) from Rotterdam. In this project, she studies parenting behavior of both fathers and mothers, parent-child interactions, family functioning, and child development in families from both relatively high as well as relatively low socioeconomic backgrounds.

Reading development, tutoring, classroom behavior, equal opportunities, students with special educational needs, inclusive education

Education Policy; Emotions and Motivation in SLA; Language Learning Problem

Collaboration in special education and youth care; schooldropout; practice oriented research

Deafblindness, Multi-sensory disabilities, Communication and Language, Special Education and Rehabilitation, Developmental Psychology

Early childhood; development; referal to special education; out-of-school care; transition

Interventions for families with multiple and complex problems and so-called at-risk families; Collaboration of professionals with these families and professionals among each other; Practice-oriented research

Leesontwikkeling, redzaamheidslezen, leesproblemen/dyslexie, gedragsproblemen

Teacher-student interactions, complex dynamical systems, motivation/ engagement and well-being, creativity, (special) educational needs

Lydia Laninga-Wijnen did her PhD at the department of Interdisciplinary Social Science, Utrecht University, The Netherlands. She has worked on the project "Social Network Analysis of Risk behavior in Early Adolescence" and examined the role of popular peers in the co-evolution of friendships and these behaviors. She currently works as postdoc at the University of Groningen, Department of Sociology, where she evaluates the SterkWerk program, which aims at reducing bullying in elementary schools.

Interdisciplinary approach (complexity, developmental and clinical science); time serial methods to understand (individual) processes of (clinical) change and psychopathology. 

Child and family welfare;  decision-making; inequalities in  child protection ;  family foster care; residential child and youth care; transition to adulthood from public care; LGBTQIA+ youth in care; participation of children and families in the child protection system

Learning, learning problems, language learning, reading

Project manager
University of Groningen Press (ugp.rug.nl)

Qualitative research, life narratives, health behaviour, medical sociology and anthropology, gender and sexuality, religion and complementary medicine, global health.

Developmental Psychopathology; Depression; Anxiety; Adolescents; Applied video games; Serious video games; Predicting psychopathology onset

Autism | Family and Child Studies | Education | Mental Health | Resilience

Support of peaple with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. Especially movement oriented support. 

Inclusive education, social participation, cooperative learning, intervention development, social validity

Unaccompanied minor asylum seekers
Asylum and migration
Evaluation research
Trafficking in human beings

animal-assisted therapy and interventions, micro-developmental research, observational research, child-adult interactions, child-animal interactions, time-serial coding and analysis, dynamic systems theory, cross-recurrence quantification analysis, autism spectrum disorders, down syndrome, developmental disabilities.Currently working on Veni 2018 grant project: (How) Does animal assisted therapy work?  Animal-assisted therapy is gaining popularity, but there is no conclusive evidence for its effect. This study investigates the effect of dog-assisted therapy for children with Down Syndrome and Autism, and looks for a possible mechanism to explain this effect: Increased synchronization between the movements of child and therapy dog.

- Families with multiple and complex problems (FMCP)
- Intensive family interventions
- Effective elements of care for FMCP
- Effectiveness studies
- Taxonomy of interventions for families with multiple and complex problems (TIFMP)

Deafblindness, sensory impairments

My expertise lies in the application of children's rights (art. 3 best interests of the child, art. 6 right to development, art. 12 participation, art. 2 non-discrimination) in decision-making and safe upgrowing of children. What should be taken into account in decision-making that causes a change in children's living environment?
Specific expertise on the following areas:
- Migration (asylum, refugees, unaccompanied minors)
- Youth protection and out-of-home placement
- Disasters (earthquakes Groningen The Netherlands)

Leerproblemen