Support to Risk Groups in the Porto Metropolitan Area

Abstract

Background: the diagnosis of children’s needs is a necessary condition to identify social exclusion, school failure, and school retention/drop out resulting from the lack/mismatch of resources. There is a clear demand for professionals and support structures in every development stage of children and youths. Objectives: to identify the community resources available to support children and young people up to the age of 18 from Porto Metropolitan area. Methodology: descriptive, transversal, quantitative study. We performed 28 interviews and 324 questionnaires to professionals, 1221 questionnaires to families. Results: childhood condition in the study area was considered very serious/serious by 74% of professionals. Lack of community work networks (18%); lack of resources (12%); lack of coordination (11%); lack of professional specific formation (11%); and lack of protocols and integrated models (6%). Conclusions: the opinions of both professionals and families coincide in characterizing the condition of children to be very serious/serious, scarce and uncoordinated resources, the main support is provided by the institutions and families.