Building partnership with parents in child home care

Abstract

The research proposed in this paper, presents the results of a training workshop which, through reflective thinking instruments, led a group of home care professionals to explore the complex issues related to the cooperation skills development and the involvement in parents that they support daily. The research, based on the practical research model proposed by Ilse Julkunen (2011) that aims to produce shared knowledge, is placed in the domain of deep changes that the field of services for children and vulnerable families is living. Among the new emerging trends is possible to include the imperative to evaluate the socio-educational practices and do research on them, in order to improve the quality of this practices. The promotion of training contexts that foster reflexivity is a research and evaluation strategy that simultaneously provides useful knowledge to the improvement of services and has a positive effect on the development of the professionalism. The path of research-training, here proposed and analyzed, highlights the transformative value of reflective practice in the involved professionals. It leads to the emergence of a very strong similarity between the changes required to operators at this historic juncture and the transformations that the system of child protection requires to parents of vulnerable families in child welfare services. Parents should demonstrate the ability to improve their skills in the interest of their children. For these parents the development of a reflective thinking appears an unavoidable step in their own biography. The article highlights key skills to promote collaboration between services and parents to realize effective interventions