Analysis of the quality of programs for the promotion of Positive Parenting in Spain.

María José Rodrigo López

COORDINATOR

SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS
Short CV

She is Professor Emeritus of Developmental and Educational Psychology and has been director of the official Master in Family, Social and Community Intervention and Mediation at the University of La Laguna and the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canarias. Member of the University Institute of Neuroscience of the University of La Laguna. Author of numerous international and national publications including the manuals Family and Human Development, Family Preservation and the Practical Manual of Positive Parenting and book chapters in publishers of international prestige as Kluwer Academic Publishers, Masson, Psychology Press, Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge and has participated in numerous national and international conferences.  She participates as a scientific reviewer in 10 international journals of impact and is PI of research projects of the National Plan, and Canarian Government. She is an expert consultant for the Ministry of Social Rights, Consumption and Agenda 2030 on positive parenting issues and in collaboration with the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces has disseminated this approach in Spain and the rest of Europe. It has participated in the European COST project called EURFAMNET (led by Lucía Jiménez, University of Seville) as part of the coordination of Spain. She has designed and implemented since 2000 numerous parental education programs for families at psychosocial risk that are used in several Spanish autonomous communities, in Portugal and Brazil. She has been president of the European Association of Developmental Psychology.

Symposium abstract

Prevention Science has endorsed the next generation of standards for evidence related to research on programme evaluation. However, some controversies persist regarding its application to the provision of child and family support under the European Positive Parenting initiative. The main contribution of this Symposium is twofold: (1) to map the current expansion of preventive family and parenting support programmes in Spain showing a wide range of evidence; and (2) to contrast the quality of the evidence provided in those programmes against the prevention standards adapted to the field by the European Family Support Network, a COST project led by Spain aimed to inform family policies and practices. Project members of the Spanish Family Support Network made up of entities at the national, regional and local levels in several sectors identified 57 programmes implemented in Spain and filled in a formative evaluation sheet for each programme. The articles in this symposium analysed the results of four main aspects in all programmes: Description, Implementation, Evaluation, and Impact/Sustainability. The findings will inform the scope and variety of support provided and the quality of programmes in Spain, providing guidelines for improvement and addressing challenges to reinforce quality assurance in child and family services.