Family intervention
Responses focused on preservation, reunification and prevention of at-risk parenting, for children and young people in their natural living environment.
What is it?
The Family Intervention Unit is a specific response from Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Lisboa as an entity with competence in matters of children and youth.
To this end, it develops actions aimed at the promotion, defence and fulfilment of the rights of children and young people in their natural living environment, along three axes: Family Preservation, Family Reunification and Prevention of At-Risk Parenting. Families may be flagged by the CPCJ, by the Court and by the NATT-PP, as well as by other Santa Casa services working with children in situations of risk or danger, with or without an applied measure, or showing intra- and/or extra-familial stress factors with mild signs of imbalance, with a view to preventing situations of danger to children and young people.
The Unit is organised into four Family Intervention and Capacity-Building Teams (EICF Centro, Norte, Ocidental and Oriental), ensuring coverage across the city of Lisbon. Each EICF is made up of Family Support Teams, in turn composed of senior specialists from different areas of the social sciences and humanities (social work, education, psychology) and family intervention practitioners.
Perguntas frequentes
The intervention model is multisystemic and organised in phases, with well-defined specific objectives and an individualised approach that begins with an assessment of the family’s situation, seeking to understand the perspective of all those involved.
The principles of the intervention are:
- Valuing the family’s privileged role in the socialisation and education of children and young people;
- Belief in the family’s capacity for change, recognising its skills and strengths, as well as its constraints;
- Family preservation as a line of intervention within the protection of children and young people, empowering families to build a path that safeguards their rights;
- Understanding the complexity and multidimensionality of the problems that characterise situations of risk and danger.
The comprehensive diagnostic assessment deepens understanding of the reasons that lead families to begin or repeat patterns that threaten the well-being of their children and young people, thereby creating the conditions to safeguard their rights. This is a semi-intensive and focused intervention that requires building a transformative relationship of respect and recognition of family strengths, preferably carried out in contexts conducive to change, namely in the home and in the community.
