From the authors:

In this text, we focus on questions concerning the transfer of a social innovation from one context to another—in this case, how the best practices of the successful and evidence-based model Finnish Icehearts are transferred to other European countries. But first, a brief look at its origins.

Photo credits: Icehearts Finland

Finnish Icehearts Programme

Icehearts is a sport-based positive youth development (PYD) programme targeted at socially vulnerable children and adolescents (Icehearts brief-in-english; Smolej 2017). The core aim of the programme is to provide vulnerable children with one long-term mentoring relationship that lasts through childhood and adolescence, 12 years. The programme is embedded within a team sport and group activities. Teams are used as a social environment where children – alongside the opportunity to access physical activity – have the possibility to experience a trustworthy relationship with the mentor leading the team, to learn social skills, to make friendships, and to experience a sense of belonging. Promoting resilience and life competencies, recognizing positive behaviors and providing opportunities for prosocial involvement are the key objectives of the programme. The crosscutting mentality of the activities is to see the good in all children, even if they may have major challenges in life.

Icehearts activities are intended (selection already in pre-primary education) for children and young people aged 7 to 18 who need special support. The need for support may include impulsiveness, learning and concentration difficulties, and behavioral and emotional problems or other obstacles, such as poverty. There are about 20 children in the team. The children make the 12-year journey together with the same mentor (full-time employment) who travels the path alongside them and guides and educates them along the way. The central impact mechanism of Icehearts work is the constant trusting and close interpersonal relationship between the mentor and the child.

The work of the Icehearts mentor can be divided into four areas: a) support in the school and schoolwork, b) team sport and other meaningful recreational activities as an after-school activity, c) child-specific individual support, including support in networks and services, d) family support. The goal is to comprehensively support the growth and development of children so that they will become full members of society and the kind of adults they themselves want to grow up to be.

According to the findings of the Icehearts Longitudinal Study, launched in 2015, by the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) the programme has shown to have a positive impact on participants’ physical competence, child-adult relationships, peer relations, social skills, self-esteem, and mental health, at one- and four-year follow-ups (Appelqvist-Schmidlechner et al. 2017, 2021, 2024). Further, also the parents (Kekkonen et al. 2022) and schools (Kekkonen et al. 2018) seemed to benefit from the programme in multiple ways (see more about the publications of the Icehearts longitudinal study; see also THL’s evaluation of Icehearts, Salasuo et al. 2023).

Icehearts’ activities have been found to be cost-effective. According to unpublished calculation (Hilli 2017) an Icehearts team saves society’s financial resources by 3 million euros over 12 years. The savings arise from changes in the children’s need for services and a decrease in the probability of children's NEET status.

Icehearts association is a non-governmental organization founded in 1996. Currently, Icehearts activities include 1,000 children in almost 70 teams in 13 cities all over Finland. The model has won several awards and nominations, for example, the Unicef Child Rights Award in 2008, the European Crime Prevention Award as Most Innovative Project in 2011, the European Prize for Social Integration through Sport in 2016, as well as a nomination as a Best Practice for non-communicable diseases by the European Commission in 2021. The last one greatly increased the international interest in Icehearts and was the starting point for the implementation of Icehearts throughout Europe.

 

Icehearts Europe project

The Icehearts Europe project (2023-2025) addresses the intersections of physical activity, mental health and physical health and delivers benefits in all these fields. The project is funded by an EU4Health Action Grant (See more about the project https://www.icehearts.eu/).

The project initiates the European-wide expansion of the best practice of Finnish Icehearts, transferring them into a model that can be implemented throughout Europe in grassroots sports organizations. The cornerstone of the project is to pilot these practices in five countries: Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Slovenia and Spain together with 12 partners. In addition, the goal is also to disseminate Icehearts more widely in Europe during the project. The second wave of organizations interested in implementing Icehearts Europe consists of 14 organizations from different European countries.

 

Transferring social innovations to a new context

Implementing social innovations is complex for many reasons. The national societal and cultural context varies across countries. The legislation, social cohesion and praxis in, for example, education and social welfare systems differs from each other also in Europe. The local needs and settings are specific and for this reason, social innovations usually cannot be simply transferred from one context to another. But at the same time, it is apparent that it is useful to utilize existing evidence-based approaches and practices, for example, to tackle the mental health problems that a growing number of children and young people struggle with today.

There are promising and evidence-based practices that are promoting health and wellbeing of children and young people. Like the best practice of the Finnish Icehearts programme. These practices are mainly developed to meet the needs of local settings. Consequently, a big challenge in implementing best practices into new environment is to get the evidence-based best practice to fit into other environments and to balance between being truthful to the original model and be prepared for some adaptations that may be essential to meet the needs of the new environment (e.g. Olsson et al. 2023).

For these reasons, implementation must be done deliberately and planned. For example, it is important to assess local needs, actors, opportunities and challenges in order to get a clear picture of the context where the implementation takes place, and the adaptations that are needed for the implementation. This requires great input already at the beginning of the process. But with the help of a team formed around adaptation and implementation, the process can be carefully planned and overseen, and tasks can be divided (Moore et al. 2021).

 

Designing Icehearts Europe model

The first major task in implementation of Finnish Icehearts at European level was to identify the key elements of the original model to be implemented in the new environment. In such tasks, it is pivotal to understand the essence of the Icehearts program: its activities and philosophy, as well as the effective mechanisms of the model. This was done through a series of project meetings and workshops in which Icehearts Finland Association and THL provided their best knowledge and experience. The experiences of children and their parents as well as teachers were also heard in the process during the project’s first study visit to Finland. This work was coordinated by Italian Institute of Public Health (ISS). As a result of the process, a written description of the Icehearts Europe concept (ISS 2023) and the Icehearts Europe Implementation Guide (ISS 2024) was created and released (these and all other Icehearts Europe resources are found here).

To facilitate the implementation process and to gain an in-depth understanding of the local piloting context, the pilot organizations conducted a Situation Analysis and Needs Assessment (SANA) with the expert organizations EuroHealthNet in Belgium and THL in Finland (Tonello et al. 2023). The SANA gathered and assessed information about the opportunities and barriers in each pilot country to implement the Icehearts programme: local needs, the factors that put youth at risk, available resources as well as already existing intervention methods. The SANA was used to identify the gaps between the current status and the desired outcomes in the local piloting context in planning the implementation of the Icehearts Europe project.

Mentoring vulnerable children requires good social skills and knowledge of different fields, also regular training is recommended. Children have commonly, for example, behavioural and emotional challenges or difficulties in learning, and they come from different backgrounds. In the project, the pilot organizations train the mentors before the actual work with the children begins. To support this and the skill set of the mentors, the project developed a training tool for mentors. This was led by ISCA and University College Cork (UCC). The training tool offers lessons on the key features of a mentor's work, providing a good basis for later learning and working (see more about the training tool).

One of the strengths of the Icehearts Europe project is the extensive expertise brought to the project by all project partners: health and well-being research institutes, universities and non-governmental organizations. All this expertise is wrapped around the project, also forming an adaptation and implementation team that supports the piloting of the Icehearts Europe activities.

  

With firm steps towards the future

As emphasized above, the implementation process has been encompassing even before the beginning of the piloting. A significant amount of ground work and resources has been done, and as a result, solid support has been created around the piloting of the Icehearts Europe activities. The pilot organizations seem to agree on this. For example, the SANA process has been praised as an effective tool. The process helped the organizations form a more holistic view of their operating environment and guided them in improving their approach and helped them find the right partners and stakeholders to support their operations (Chambers et al. 2024).

The operation has started in all pilot organizations and will continue at least until the end of 2025. The burning question will, of course, be the impact of the activities. The monitoring and evaluating process (done by University of Cassino and Southern Lazio, UNICAS) is closely linked not only to the activities, but also to the whole project. We will hear from these results later. But looking to the results of the THL's Icehearts Finland longitudinal study can reveal some expected results of the piloting (see Appelqvist-Schmidlechner et al. 2017).

Another pivotal question is how to achieve and maintain the sustainability and continuity of the Icehearts Europe activities? This is an important issue to tackle, and it is also responsible to act towards it, as Dr Fiona Chambers of University College Cork recently stated: " You can’t go into a project with vulnerable children and not be sustainable"(Malyshkina 2024). It is certain that, in addition to the ongoing pilot activities, the project will focus more and more on sustainability and continuity of the Icehearts Europe activities.

This is the stage where Icehearts Finland and the Icehearts Europe project are at the moment. The European-wide implementation of the best practices of Icehearts Finland are in promising phase. From now on, the focus will be on piloting, evaluating and monitoring both the project and the activities as well as on the sustainability of the current operations and the spread of the activities across Europe. It is certain that the project and piloting of Icehearts Europe provides a good starting point for the introduction and implementation of Icehearts Europe more widely in Europe.

 

References:

Appelqvist-Schmidlechner K, Haavanlammi M, Autio R, Kekkonen M, Fröjd S. (2024) Changes in behavioural and emotional well-being of children participating in the Icehearts programmeme: A feasibility pilot study with 4-year follow-up. Health & Prevention 34.  doi.org/10.1016/j.mhp.2024.200348

Appelqvist-Schmidlechner, K., Haavanlammi, M. & Kekkonen, M. (2021) Benefits and underlying mechanisms of organized sport participation on mental health among socially vulnerable boys. A qualitative study on parents’ perspective in the sport-based Icehearts programmeme. Sports in Society. (DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2021.1996348).

Appelqvist-Schmidlechner, K., Kekkonen, M., Wessman, J. & Sarparanta, T. (2017) Jääsydämet. Icehearts-toiminnassa aloittavien lasten psykososiaalinen hyvinvointi ja arviot toiminnan vaikuttavuudesta yhden vuoden seurannassa. Helsinki: Terveyden ja hyvinvoinnin laitos, Raportti 6/2017. (https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-302-892-0).

Chambers, F., Spalding, T., Moynihan, S. & Lorenzutti, N. (2024) Icehearts Europe. Partnership Mapping: Making Connections (A Compilation and Synthesis Report). The Icehearts Europe project. (Unpublished)

Hilli, Petri (2017) Icehearts-joukkueen investointilaskelma. Suomen Icehearts Ry. (Unpublished)

ISS (2023) Icehearts Europe Model. The Icehearts Europe project. https://www.icehearts.eu/resources

ISS (2024) Icehearts Europe implementation guide. The Icehearts Europe project. https://www.icehearts.eu/resources

Kekkonen, M., Appelqvist-Schmidlechner, K., Haavanlammi, M. & Känkänen, P. (2022) Icehearts-toiminta vanhempien sosiaalisena tukena – ”Se pieni kysymys, että mitä sulle kuuluu, miten sä jaksat”. Janus – Sosiaalipolitiikan ja sosiaalityön tutkimuksen Aikakauslehti 30:2, 157–173. (https://doi.org/10.30668/janus.100431).

Kekkonen, M. ym. (2018) Icehearts koulun kumppanina. Teoksessa Mika Gissler, Marjatta Kekkonen & Päivi Känkänen (toim.): Nuoret palveluiden pauloissa – Nuorten elinolot -vuosikirja 2018. Teema 30. Terveyden ja hyvinvoinnin laitos. Tampere: PunaMusta Oy, 179–192.

Malyshkina, M. (2024) Insights from the Icehearts Round Table and Study Visit at the Moving People – Moving Europe Conference. https://www.icehearts.eu/updates-detail/1303/Icehearts_Round_Table_and_Study_Visit_at_the_Moving_People_Moving_Europe_Conference

Moore, G., Campbell, M., Copeland, L., Craig, P., Movsisyan, A., Hoddinott, P., Littlecott, H., O'Cathain, A., Pfadenhauer, L., Rehfuess, E., Segrott, J., Hawe, P., Kee, F., Couturiaux, D., Hallingberg, B. & Evans, R. (2021) Adapting interventions to new contexts-the ADAPT guidance. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.n1679.

Olsson, T. M., von Thiele Schwarz, U., Hasson, H., Vira, E. G., & Sundell, K. (2024) Adapted, Adopted, and Novel Interventions: A Whole-Population Meta-Analytic Replication of Intervention Effects. Research on Social Work Practice, 34(8), 860-872. https://doi.org/10.1177/10497315231218646

Salasuo, M., Vartiamäki, T., Mäki-Opas, T., Hasanen, E. & Turkia, T. (2023) HYTE-toimintamalli 7 / 2023. Icehearts. Terveyden ja hyvinvoinnin laitos, THL https://www.julkari.fi/handle/10024/148568

Smolej, M. (2017) Icehearts. Käsikirja. Helsinki: Suomen Icehearts Ry.

Tonello, S., Jarke, H., Kekkonen, M., Appelqvist-Schmidlechner, K. (2023) Icehearts Europe SANA Report. The Icehearts Europe project. https://www.icehearts.eu/resources

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Find out more about Icehearts Finland: https://www.icehearts.fi/brief-in-english/
Find out more about Icehearts Europe: https://www.icehearts.eu

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.