Juan Carlos Martín Quintana
University of La Palmas de Gran Canaria
Group Parental Education in Different Contexts from the Positive Parenthood Approach
Participants: Juan Carlos Martín Quintana1; Ágata Ojeda Arnau2; Sonia Padilla Urra2; Graziano Pellegrino2,3
1University of La Palmas de Gran Canarias; 2Asociación Hestia; 3University of La Laguna
Symposium Summary
Positive parenthood is to promote parents acquiring skills, receiving training, and having an adequate parental behaviour that helps to meet the basic needs of the children, by attending to the following principles that make up the positive exercise of parenthood. These are: fostering stable and secure emotional bonds; achieving a well-structured environment with flexible rules, supervision and limits; stimulating learning for life and school; recognizing, showing interest in the child’s world; promoting empowerment; and, above all, educating without violence.
To carry out this training, group programmes have been developed, following an experiential and evidence-based methodology. These programmes are implemented in different contexts: in Social Services, with families declared administratively at risk; in Educational Centres, with families whose children are at risk of early school leaving; in Health Centres, with parents with children aged 0 to 3; and finally, in the legal sphere, with parents deprived of their liberty. This symposium will present the different programmes implemented in each context with the results obtained.
Short CV
Senior Lecturer at the ULPGC. Coordinator of the Official and Interuniversity Master's Degree in Family, Social and Community Intervention and Mediation at the ULPGC. President of the Hestia Association for Family, Psychoeducational and Social Intervention and Research. Member of the competitive research group of Inclusive Education of the ULPGC, and of the experts' group in Positive Parenthood of the Ministry of Health, Consumption and Social Welfare and of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces.
His lines of research are related to family assessment; family intervention with families in a situation of vulnerability and/or psychosocial risk; group parental education for different family contexts; experiential methodology for the training of fathers and mothers and the risk of early school leaving. All his publications are framed within the Paradigm of Positive Parenthood, specifically related to parental education, family intervention, and Early School Leaving in relation to the family context.
Among his most recent publications are Impact of the "Learning Together, Growing in Family" Programme on the Professionals and Attention to Families Services (2013); Influence of form and timing of social support on parental outcomes of a child-maltreatment prevention program (2012). He is co-author of relevant books within the field of Family Practical Manual of Positive Parenting (2015) or Community Intervention with adolescents and families at risk (2013).
In collaboration with the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces and the Ministry of Health, Social Services and Equality of the Spanish Government, he was part of the expert group on Positive Parenthood. Three documents on the Positive Parenting Paradigm emerged from this collaboration: "Positive Parenthood and Local Family Support Policies" (2010a); "Parental Education as a Psychoeducational Resource to Promote Positive Parenthood " (2010b); "Good Professional Practices for Positive Parenthood Support" (2011); and the Guide to Good Practices in Positive Parenthood: a Resource to Support Professional Practice with Families (2015).
As a member of the research group "Inclusive Education" of the ULPGC, and in collaboration with the Department of Education of the Canary Islands Government, it works on the assessment of the risk of early school leaving. From this study, educational responses for school continuity have been proposed.
Co-author of group parental education programmes to promote parental skills such as: "Living adolescence as a family"; "Learning together, growing up as a family"; "Growing up happy as a family"; "Happy to know me"; "Growing up together" group programme to promote skills for secondary school pupils; or Parents without Barriers for parents deprived of their liberty.