Description
The project will support families, in various areas in Lisbon, struggling with economic and social fragility, family breakdown, no access to quality education initiatives, school failure and dropout. It will strive to prevent and combat these situations, and to empower the beneficiary families. Weekly one-hour sessions will be provided, attended by groups of families, to address topics relevant to the education of children and the resolution of family problems, with the aid of experts and in a setting full of music, rhymes, dances, games, pair reading and storytelling between parents and children. The beneficiary families will thus improve their ability to support the development of their children, through the way they interact, through their ability to observe and serve as a role model, through the creation of a positive disposition towards learning and by mitigating truancy and domestic violence.
Summary of project results
Young families in situations of economic and social fragility are characterized by family disruption, domestic violence, child neglect, low competences of parents and caregivers, lack of positive bonds between parents and children, teenage pregnancy, generational uprooting, social exclusion, isolation, lack or low self-esteem in adults and children, lack of awareness that parents and caregivers are the primary educators of their children, lack of opportunities for positive interaction between parents and children, fragile physical, psycho-affective and socio-moral development of children, difficulty in accessing quality educational initiatives, serious problems of illiteracy and numeracy in adults and children, high failure and early school leaving. The project allowed 147 families (well above the target) to experience and develop parenting competences which promote values and better knowledge about their children, develop communication between parents and children, improve quality of their interactions, adapt educational strategies to the needs of the children and their development and gain greater parental trust and gratification. It involved 179 parents/caregivers, 195 children and 7 education institutions. 21 parents have been trained in a more intensive and in-depth way through 5 series of thematic sessions in order to improve their communication skills with children. The evaluation questionnaires show as a general rule an interesting progress in their ability to deal with children and their problems. The project included a significant component of capacity-building for the promoter NGO and its partners with many training sessions for their staff. As the partnership included competences on several complementary areas linked to family issues, there was exchange of knowledge and practices between the involved entities, enriching all of them.
Summary of bilateral results