The effectiveness of the "With the families" project at the AIP National Congress

The socio-educational project "With the families" is based on a specific methodology: the Touchpoints approach of Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, an American pediatrician. The scientific validity of the Touchpoints approach in recent years is allowing us, through periodic evaluation tests, to collect data and analyze the results to measure the project’s effectiveness and impact on the fragile families that we follow through home visits.

Dr. Cecilia Tazza is one of the project’s educators whose thesis subject was "With the families". Today, it is part of the doctorate that Dr. Tazza is doing at the Department of Education at the Università degli Studi di Roma Tre. Just a few days ago Dr. Cup, together with prof. Giuseppe Bove and prof. Susanna Pallini of the Università di Roma Tre presented at the XXXIII AIP National Congress in the Developmental and Educational Psychology Section. This was part of the symposium: "Affective relationships and psychological well-being in children, adolescents and young adults”. It focused on the case of a family that we have followed for a year and today has completed its journey with positive results.

During her speech, "The Touchpoints approach: a home visiting program to promote conscious parenting and the psychological well-being of children", Dr. Tazza told the story about a family we met when the mother was pregnant with her third child. It is a solid family but the mother suffered from anxiety and depression and managing such a large family, without the support of grandparents, made everything more complex and extremely stressful.

A year of support with home visits allowed us to:

• give concrete help to parents to get in tune with the child and her changes;
• gave them the time necessary to absorb and reflect on the new information received, also relating it to their experiences;
• increased their self-esteem by offering them the opportunity to increase awareness of the resources and skills they already had and which have been further strengthened thanks to the application of Touchpoints.

The experience reported at the XXXIII AIP National Congress is a case that demonstrates promising results of the Brazelton method, as a useful approach to mitigate the negative effects of risky parenting, guaranteeing children the best possible start.