121 Implementation and experiences of the Solid Start program Quantitative data collection Participants The questionnaire was distributed among all municipalities that requested funds in 2019 (N = 147) and among all municipalities -including those without funds- in 2020 and 2021 (N = 355 and 352 respectively). The Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport invited the municipalities that requested funds to participate in the questionnaire, the Association of Dutch Municipalities (Dutch abbreviation: VNG) invited the other municipalities to participate in the questionnaire. Data collection The online questionnaire focused on the local implementation of Solid Start and consisted of questions about municipalities’ development towards Solid Start coalitions. The questions mainly had closed answer categories and were slightly different each year depending on national developments and new insights. The questions that were relevant to this article and comparable over the years included the following topics: Solid Start funds, local coalition, action plan, goals and ambitions, partners, activities, monitoring, support and COVID-19. Examples of questions included: ‘Has your municipality formed a Solid Start coalition?’ and ‘What is the status of monitoring Solid Start in your municipality?’ An overview of the questions can be found in Table 2 (results section). Data analysis Quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics. We used Excel and R to calculate frequencies and percentages. Qualitative data collection Participants For the interviews and FGDs, we used purposive sampling to ensure heterogeneity (36). We invited representatives of care and support organizations (managers and care providers), Solid Start project leaders or advisors, other municipal officials, representatives of national knowledge institutes and professional associations, and researchers to join a FGD at a predefined time. In 2021, we organized individual interviews with those not available if their perspective was otherwise missing. Additionally in 2021, we invited clients and experts-by-experience for individual interviews at their preferred time and place, because we wanted to create the conditions in which they felt comfortable to share their personal stories in more detail than possible during a FGD. Clients received care and support during the first thousand days at the time of the interview. The expertsby-experience had collective experiential knowledge or were trained in using personal and collective experiences to support families in vulnerable situations. Most participants received an invitation to participate directly through an e-mail by the research team. One of the experts-by-experience supported the recruitment of clients by providing them information and discussing a feasible date and place. 5
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