Peer-reviewed article
Positive parenting, family resilience, and child participation in family reunification: good professional practices
Ainoa Mateos Inchaurrondo, Julio Rodríguez Rodríguez, Núria Fuentes-Peláez, Sara Pérez-Hernando ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examines how child protection professionals in Spain implemented a family reunification programme called 'Caminar en familia' that emphasises positive parenting, family resilience, and child participation. Twenty professionals from three regions received training and then used the approach with families. The study found that incorporating these three elements into professional practice led professionals to better recognise children's ability to identify their own needs and the parenting skills parents need to develop.
Key points
- Professionals showed a positive trend in adopting positive parenting, family resilience, and child participation approaches after training and implementation
- The programme raised professionals' awareness of children's ability to identify their own needs
- The programme helped professionals recognise specific parenting skills that families needed to improve
- The study was conducted across three Spanish regions: Catalonia, Castilla-La Mancha, and Navarra
- The evidence suggests a need to shift the focus of professional support within child protection systems
Limitations
The study only measured professionals' perceptions through self-reported questionnaires before and after training, with no independent assessment of changes in actual practice or outcomes for children and families. The small sample size of 20 professionals limits generalalisability of findings.
Abstract
Good professional practices in family reunification processes require a favourable attitude towards an approach to socio-educational action based on positive parenting, family resilience, and child participation. This quantitative study provides knowledge regarding these three perspectives based on the experience of 20 child protection system professionals (in Catalonia, Castilla-La Mancha, and Navarra) who have participated in training on and the implementation of the programme entitled ‘Caminar en familia’ (Walk as a family). Data were collected by administering a Likert-type questionnaire on two occasions, before starting the training on the programme and after implementing it with the group of families. A descriptive analysis of the data was performed using the SPSS v.25 software package. The results indicated a positive trend when incorporating positive parenting, family resilience, and child participation into professional practices in the child protection system, raising awareness of the children’s ability to identify their own needs and the parenting skills that their parents need to improve. In conclusion, the evidence invites us to shift the focus of professional support within the child protection system.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Training and implementation of 'Caminar en familia' (Walk as a family) programme with child protection professionals
- Population
- 20 child protection system professionals in Catalonia, Castilla-La Mancha, and Navarra, Spain
Key finding
Positive trend observed in incorporating positive parenting, family resilience, and child participation into professional practices