Avaliação de um projecto de preservação da unidade familiar

: o projecto família

Abstract

Family is the building block of social organization, providing the best environment for the balanced development of children. Based on this assumption, Projecto Família works with families in crisis, aiming to promote their skills and the development of healthy family relationships, thus avoiding the institutionalization of children and the youth. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of Projecto Família, and assess the reasons underlying the cases where effectiveness is not satisfactory. The study follows a new methodology for implementation analysis of projects and programs proposed by Mendes (2006), based on Agency Theory. The first step of this methodology is the assessment of the implementation gaps of the project taking its objectives as given. The second step is the explanation of these gaps by looking at viability constraints, individual rationality and incentive compatibility factors. Three main groups involved in the project were taken into consideration: the team, referring entities and enrolled families. After the collection of data, carried out by document analysis, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires, 80 cases of families accompanied by Projecto Família in 2010 were analyzed, with the use of quantitative and qualitative methods. The creation and calculation of an Effectiveness Index of the project showed that in almost 70% of the cases the effectiveness rate of the project is over 40%. The low value of this index determined in the remaining cases occurs due to the fact that incentive compatibility constraints were not met by the families enrolled, their behavior being poorly consistent with the goals of the project. As with any research, there are shortcomings is this analysis such as the impossibility of getting the participation of the families involved in the project and developing this analysis for a longer period of time.

Date of Award	5 Sept 2012
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Américo Mendes (Supervisor)