Parent- and Family-Focused Support in Portugal: Context and Analysis of Services/Programmes from an Equity Perspective
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Parent- and Family-Focused Support in Portugal: Context and Analysis of Services/Programmes from an Equity Perspective Gil Nata1 · Joana Cadima1 Published online: 12 March 2019 © The Author(s) 2019
Abstract In Europe, different approaches are used to support families of young children and to promote the quality of their home learning environment. Nevertheless, program evaluations often do not consider the macro-social context in which the programs are implemented. The purpose of this study was to understand and discuss the contextual factors, facilitators and underlying challenges of family support services in Portugal. This paper begins by providing an up-to-date overview of relevant social context statistics, about poverty, use of services and early education and care programs. These statistics serve to document country policies regarding parents and families. Secondly, 11 research-supported and promising parent- and family-focused support programs currently implemented in Portugal were analyzed. Key features and principles that have been empirically determined to address social and educational inequalities are discussed in the context of Portugal. Keywords Family support · Parenting support · Effective programs · Portugal Across many countries in Europe, different approaches have been used to support families of young children and to promote the quality of their home learning environment. Even though several studies on the effectiveness of such interventions have been conducted, existing program evaluations tend to not consider the macro-social context in which the programs have been implemented, including preexistent services, local needs and target group specificities. Consideration of the wider context within which programs are created and implemented is particularly relevant since there is conflicting evidence on the effectiveness of widely known programs. For example, Triple P (Level 3), shown to be effective by several studies, was deemed as generally ineffective when implemented in the Dutch context (Spijkers, Jansen, & Reijneveld, 2013). Similarly, studies conducted in the UK showed that Family-Nurse Partnership did not provide gains on top of the typical services (Robling et al., 2016). The results presented in this paper stem from secondary analysis of data gathered within the ISOTIS project. ISOTIS (Acronym for “Inclusive Education and Social Support to * Gil Nata [email protected] 1
Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Porto, Rua Alfredo Allen, 4200‑135 Porto, Portugal
Tackle Inequalities in Society”) is a European Union Horizon 2020 research project that aims to contribute to effective policy and practice development at different system levels in order to effectively combat early arising and persisting educational inequalities, with a particular focus on groups with immigrant background and/or ethnic minorities, as well as low-income families/parents. Within this project, an “Inventory and Analysis of Promising and Evidencebased Parent- and Family-Focused Support Progr
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