All4Children: The Integrated Model of Family Foster Care (MIAF®) to promote high-quality child welfare practices in Portugal
19-02-2025 | 01:30 PM – 2:30 PM | Room EA227
Speaker: Mariana Negrão (FEP-UCP)
Description:
Research on the harmful effects of institutionalization across child functioning domains, especially on infants and young children, is well documented, as is the capacity for recovery following family foster care (FFC) placement. Despite this, in Portugal, only 3% of all out-of-home children are placed in FFC. Seeking to respond to the European calls-to-action for deinstitutionalization, the 2019 Portuguese law has reinforced non-kinship FFC as the alternative care measure for children up to the age of 6.
This system shift to FFC is challenging as it requires highly specialized services to meet foster family and child needs. To answer to these requirements the Integrated Model of Family Foster Care (MIAF) was recently developed, covering the FFC full continuum, from the recruitment, selection, assessment and training of foster families to foster care placement and child transition to a permanent solution. This project aims to assess the initial implementation process of MIAF's, contributing to prior research in this field, but also to strengthen practice and inform policy in a critical stage of deinstitutionalization in the country.
The All4Children project focuses both on process evaluation as well as outcome evaluation of the MIAF, respecting a mixed method and multi informant approach:
- For process evaluation, it assesses fidelity and acceptability of each of the modules of the MIAF;
- For outcome evaluation, following a longitudinal design, it collects data on the adjustment of both child and foster family.
The project has already produced some preliminary results regarding process evaluation, specifically regarding the adjustment of recruitment, selection, assessment and training processes, and some of these conclusions can also be shared.
NOTE: This Learning Coffee will be held in Portuguese.
