Intervenção na parentalidade com famílias em risco psicossocial: resultados de um programa baseado na teoria da vinculação, desafios e boas práticas

Psychosocial risk circumstances often hamper parents’ ability to provide optimal childrearing, leading to the risk of adverse child developmental and social outcomes. Therefore, families experiencing social-economic hardship may benefit from parenting support. However, the same psychosocial risk circumstances frequently compromise parenting intervention efforts. The aims of our talk will be twofold: To present the main results of the Portuguese Randomized Clinical Trial of the Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD, Juffer, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Van IJzendoorn, 2008) with a group of high psychosocial risk mothers and their young children (1 to 4 year old). The mothers’ (n=44) socio-demographic characteristics indicate deprived living conditions: low education (70%), high unemployment (71%) and welfare assistance (80%) rates. The VIPP-SD proved to be effective in enhancing positive parent-child interactions, specifically by reducing maternal intrusiveness and increasing child responsiveness and involvement, and also by decreasing maternal harsh discipline when mothers experienced high levels of parenting stress at intake. To identify the constraints met during the parenting intervention and analyze possible strategies to overcome them. Concerns about primary needs, tensions within the family system and tiredness of multi-assistance characterized our sample and often threatened recruitment and retention in the study. Program’s features that meet the families’ needs and allow them to overcome their parenting difficulties like the use of the video-feedback technique with an attachment-based perspective in a home-based setting through a collaborative and strength-driven approach will be discussed.