Life (digital) tools to empower the relationship between parent and child

The relationship between parents and children is changing over time, with new technologies, modern ways of communication between children, and different ways of spending free time parents are on a daily basis adapting to new information on how to communicate with their children, nurture their maturation and development and bring them up into confident and vigilant children. With modern technologies developing fast, low-skilled parents needed more support, guidance and mentoring in meeting the everyday challenges of raising their children.

With the SKILLS4PARENTS project the consortium, involving Cyprus, Italy, Belgium, Croatia and Netherlands countries, has aimed to influence the lives of adult educators, parents and children in a way so that all three groups gain valuable life tools. For adult educators’ life tools are in a form of enhancing professional skills, for parents those are parental and communication skills and for children it is their overall well-being, quality of life and better relationships between parent and child. The involved countries were setting the following objectives:

  1. support parents who are low-skilled in acquiring and developing skills and 5 key competences – namely communication, empowerment, mediation, problem-solving and digital skills,
  2. extend the competences of adult educators who support and mentor parents in the teaching of various skills through the use of digital technologies so that they can provide high-quality learning opportunities tailored to the needs of both target groups (TG),
  3. connect adult trainers and parents (and their children) through digital methods of learning and knowledge transfer, based on scientific findings of modern psychology and preventive sciences,
  4. implement the SKILLS4PARENTS model which will easily be transferable and used for solving different problems.

During the project, the consortium developed three outputs:

First of all, a METHODOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK for implementation through the collection of feedback on topics was created by the partners and representatives of the target groups. This first research phase was essential to gather information and creating a training model. It consisted of a review of relevant literature, research of cases of good practices and an assessment of TG’s educational needs. So, a co-designed methodology was employed in which parents’ and adult educators’ participation was structured with the proper methodology (IO1) to develop the educational material.

Secondly, A TRAINING MODEL which was co-created between the main partners and representatives of the TGs. This was due to our LTTA activity held in Cyprus in September 2021, where educators, together with project partners gave feedback to a raw version of 5 learning packages corresponding to the five skills we wanted to promote. After months of hard work, the consortium produced 2 documents, namely a guidebook for parents and a handbook for educators. All these materials were then translated into national languages.

Last but not least, THE ONLINE DIGITAL PLATFORM AND COMMUNITY, which hosts the learning material and the digital tools to support parents and adult educators with pedagogical guidelines. In line with the sustainability goals, the online digital platform will enable other parents and adult educators who are not necessarily directly involved in the project to apply the SKILLS4PARENTS methodology which contributes to supporting and strengthening them on a wider range.

Through the project, the SKILLS4PARENTS model was developed which will provide adult educators with knowledge and competencies to strengthen their professional profiles and better involvement of parents in their child’s development and life in general.

Project SKILLS4PARENTS will contribute to decreasing the digital inequalities in the access and use, reducing inequalities in learning digital skills of adult educators and parents, and concomitantly children, and to reducing inequalities in the provision of online support services for parents and families.

Please find the website, the platform and the Facebook page at the following links:

https://skills4parents.eu/

https://hub.skills4parents.eu/

https://www.facebook.com/Skills4ParentsEU