Growing In Family Today Erasmus Project

Project Title

Growing In Family Today

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for vocational education and training

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2018

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Inclusion – equity; Gender equality / equal opportunities

Project Summary

The GIFT project – Growing In Family Today – is a 3-year strategic partnership project that focuses on professional family support practices.

Indeed, in the countries involved – Spain, France, Italy and Romania – it is the same observation: the diversity of the new forms of families and of the educational and cultural models, forces the social workers to adapt their vision and their practices to rethink the modalities of support and help to parents and families, not to mention the child. What “makes family” has evolved a lot in recent years but the family remains the first place of socialization and of the building of landmarks. She is irreplaceable. But professional representations and the accompaniment methods are no longer in line with these developments. However, experience shows us that the place of parents, of the family depends very much on the posture of the professionals, of their skills and the means they are given to work on these issues.

Considering parents and families as partners in an alliance work is recent and still poorly implemented. In addition, the governance of public policies dedicated to children and family is still all too often marked by a globally flawed cooperation and a compartmentalization of the different professional sectors (child welfare, health, medico-social, justice , national education, etc.).

The purpose of our project is to promote the development of positive relationships between parents and children within the family, in its emotional, relational and educational dimensions. Because, if parenting support actions are intended to support parents in the exercise of their responsibility, they must also allow boys and girls to grow up in a supportive environment.

Our target audience is therefore primarily composed of any social or medico-social worket who works with parents, children and their families. By working to identify and characterize good practices, we will be at the heart of the professional competencies specific to supporting quality parenting. By extension, the final recipients of our work are the persons accompanied, so that their needs are better identified and that the care provided to them is more appropriate.

The GEFA partnership is composed of 4 field partners and 6 universities from 4 countries (Spain, France, Italy, Romania). We anticipate significant involvement of field partners in our various activities to keep the project focused on professional practices.

The operational objectives of GEFA are to:
– improve the professional practices and skills of social workers who work with families, parents and children;
– rethink support and intervention arrangements with parents and families;
– enable professionals to update their knowledge and support tools;
– stimulate the studies and research approaches of academics by our work on “informed practices”and by changing their perspective in contact with our experiences and practices in the field;
– Influence parenting education programs and public governance schemes in our countries through spreading good practices and comparing different approaches.

Our project is based on a methodology of identification, characterization and dissemination of professional practices that we will identify as “good practices”.

The identification of practices will be done during the first two years of the project essentially, thanks to exchanges of practice (4 meetings of learning activities) and surveys carried out with a panel of professionals of family support in each of the 4 countries of the partnership.
The transnational dimension of this work gives it all its meaning and will allow us to characterize, through a solid methodology, consensual professional practices, transferable in different fields of work or different organizations.
We will focus on the third and final year of the project to disseminate the results of our work, thanks to European Days, during which participants will be trained both in identifying what makes today’s family and both tools and devices that enable professionals to best support family members in their responsibility.
The deliverable documents of our intellectual productions offer an interesting support to the partners to continue later and locally this work of sensitization / training to the good practices of support to parenting.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 301679,16 Eur

Project Coordinator

Association CAMINANTE & Country: FR

Project Partners

• CONSELL COMARCAL DEL VALLES OCCIDENTAL
• COMUNE DI VERONA
• UNIVERSITATEA ALEXANDRU IOAN CUZA DIN IASI
• UNIVERSITE DE PAU ET DES PAYS DE L’ADOUR
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI VERONA
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI PADOVA
• UNIVERSIDAD DE LLEIDA