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Portuguese blog: www.icdpportugal.blogspot.com

From a report by Penélope Villar: - Presently the work of ICDP Portugal is mostly in “Roda Viva” Educational and Social Centre, situated in a social quarter in Alfragide, near Lisbon. A significant part of the population that attend “Roda Viva” lives on low income and/or is dependent on social and economic support. The Centre aims to contribute to the promotion and social integration of disadvantaged populations and groups at risk - in community and social perspective.  The activities of the centre fall within the areas of early childhood education, family support and monitoring, prevention of domestic violence, sports and socio-cultural animation, marginality/delinquency and addictions prevention, study support, etc. The Centre is a non profit organization hosting children and youngsters from 4 months to 15 years old, total of 115 children. Our ICDP team focused first on sensitizing parents of children attending the centre and later we trained the whole technical team consisting of 4 educators and 5 educational helpers. In addition, 32 persons are to be accredited as ICDP Promoters.

The aim of ICDP was to develop in those who deal directly with the 115 children an emotional and communicative language as uniform and consistent as possible, so that the necessary and fundamental changes can happen at the levels of children education and their cognitive-emotional development.  As result of our work changes were observed in the parents, the technical team, as well as in participants that we trained as Promoters. The success of this intervention ensured the continuity of the project, which will see its scope expanded in the coming months.  In 2009 our main objective is Parental Education in the context of promoting more harmonious, constructive and less aggressive/violent interpersonal relationships between parents and children. A further round of ICDP sensitisation sessions are given to parents who did not attend ICDP previously.  In addition trainer Penélope Villar has been holding ICDP meetings for mothers victims of Domestic Violence; she is also providing individual psychotherapeutic support to them.

What really makes us believe in the work that we are doing is represented by the “real people and their life stories”, so we would like to share two stories of parents who participated in the sensitization sessions conducted in the "Roda Viva” Centre. One example is a mother of one of the boys considered to be more "problematic". From the first moment she confessed to have no patience, to be shouting and beating her children . As she was progressively more involved in ICDP there were profound changes in the way she saw her children and she began to understand the impact that her behaviour had on them. She became one of the most interested members of the group and shared her experiences with remarkable frankness. She internalized the ICDP concepts and the changes in her behaviour were significant. She completely stopped beating her children, became more consistent when imposing limits to them. She became more calm and relaxed and her relationship with children became more peaceful and easy. Another example is a father who changed and started to feel the need to be with his daughter. Initially he was totally unaware of the importance of spending time with his daughter and the impact it had on her psycho-emotional development. He gradually started to express himself positively about playing with his daughter and began to show more and more interest in spending time with her in order to give her a “secure basis” (in his own words). Towards the end, he verbalized the need to be firm with her within the set limits, even when she was up against them.

In November 2009 began the sensitization training of new team members, who were not covered by the previous training which took place in the Alfragide project “Roda Viva”. Important and special emphasis was placed on achieving standardization of the “interactive language” used by all technical members of the Centre. We must underline that this has been very positive for the relations between all members of the Technical Team.

The easiness of communication, the sense of membership and the spirit of mutual support gained expression in day-to-day situations. These sessions have been taking place weekly over the past four months, which led to a more extended intervention and powered a real internal change of each member’s conceptions. This reinforces the idea that it is important to give time and “space” for those attending to the training sessions to expose their personal experiences and difficulties. The International Trainer Teresa Mendes and trainer Penélope Villar have conducted the training. We have now reached the final phase of training and this new team will achieve the ICDP Promoter level. "

On 16th of April 2010, the ICDP programme was presented at a workshop in Lisbon, as part of the "I Technical Seminar", organized by the government agency “Santa Casa da Misericórdia das Caldas da Rainha”. The seminar was attended by various experts, including kinder garden teachers, psychologists, sociologists, practitioners of social inclusion techniques among others. For over three hours participants were able to explore the relevance of integrated interventions and the importance of coordination of efforts. Working in isolation in different areas of intervention was emphasized as futile since a child is “one person”, a whole. The presentation of the ICDP program and of the ICDP work developed in Portugal took place in an informal atmosphere. There were significant exchanges of experiences and sharing of perspectives among all present. There was common understanding that the quality of the relationship between the caregivers and the children is the key for the success of psychosocial interventions. Actual changes in attitudes are likely to be successfully maintained only when developed "in a relationship" over time. The family structures and their dynamics have changed and parents need more support for the education of their children. We have to rely on the quality of relationships between the "technicians" and our children and above all we need to be aware that this aspect is not only true in scenarios of war or extreme poverty.

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