Connected: Het Centrum voor Jeugd en Gezin Hoeksche Waard aan de social media!

Abstract

This study focuses on the identification of the opportunities for the Center for Youth and Family Hoeksche Waard (CJG HW) to use social media in contact with parents and their needs and expectations. In this study participated 481 parents from ‘de Hoeksche Waard’ in the Netherlands, they filled in a questionnaire during their visit to one of the CJG HW locations. This study was about passive and active parenting support with a future social media account that will be use by the CJG HW. The results shows that there are different factors that predict the use of this future social media account by parents. The social media account will frequently be consulted by young parents, parents who consults their formal networks for parenting questions, parents with needs of professional parenting support and most of all parents who already use social media. There were also several factors that were not predictive, the education level of parents, the family size, the age of the children, if the village where the parents lived has a CJG HW location or not, the number of parenting questions and if parents consults their informal network for parenting questions. It is positive that these factors are not predictive, because it may be concluded that the CJG HW will reach a large group of parents from ‘de Hoeksche Waard’. Parents with different levels of education, parents with a different family size, parents of children with different ages, parent is and around the villages with a CJG HW location, parents with few of many parenting questions, but also parents who consult their informal network for parenting questions. It is recommended to take the needs and expectations of the need-assessment in setting up a social media account. Reach parents via Facebook once a week, with information about topics they find interesting.