Parenting support programmes. Pistoia’s “Lo Spazio Piccolissimi” Children’s and Families’ Center

Abstract

The parental support programmes have developed during the last thirty years, thanks to the attention that the Pedagogy has paid to the family. Usually, the main aim of the family education interventions is that of supporting parenthood from an educational point of view. These interventions are thus both supportive and preventive, meaning that they are designed to be enacted before difficulties in the development of the children, and in the relationships within the family, may arise. This essay presents a comparative study carried out in Italy and in Spain in the Centers for Children and Families (CCF), paying a special attention to the survey conducted in the “Centro Piccolissimi” in the Area Rossa Bambini of Pistoia’s Municipality. From this research some significant features and aspects which characterize this service emerged. Among them, there is the figure of the professional as a promoter of positive parenthood, along with the welcoming ecological framework which becomes the repository of adult-child experience, and stimulate and orientates it at the same time, and a prolonged time which is able of giving back value and significance to the actions.