Meetings

  • 7th EurofamNet Management Committee Meeting

    On-line
     February 7, 2022 to February 9, 2022

    The 7th EurofamNet meeting was held online from the 7th to the 9th of February 2022. It was originally planned to take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, but was moved online due to the Covid-19 situation. On Monday 7th the meetings started with parallel working group sessions where leaders organized their work with their respective subgroups. The Policy and Practice group meeting also took place on the 7th, as well as the Young Researchers group. To end the day, the Core group meeting was held. Both WG and Horizontal leaders reported their progress and coordination issues were discussed. On Tuesday 8th a special workshop was held focused on exchanging learning from the working groups across the full network. It started with a Plenary session in which the Working Group leaders updated the network participants on the advances made regarding outputs and deliverables. After it, participants were divided into smaller, mixed groups containing members from the different working groups. The Workshop was closed with another Plenary session where participants shared their experience and reflections from the small group sessions. On Wednesday 9th, representatives from 26 out of 34 COST countries attended the Management Committee meeting. Among the decisions taken were the approval of deliverables and the inclusion of new participants of the Network. The meetings were closed by a stimulating Knowledge Exchange session, in which the voices of academics, practitioners, policy representatives and families were heard. The session addressed the relationship between COVID-19 and family support, while, on this occasion, paying special attention to vulnerable families.

  • Malta meeting: Core Group & WG1 + WG5 meetings

    Valetta - University of Malta
     October 13, 2021 to October 14, 2021

    On 13th and 14th October 2021, a hybrid EurofamNet meeting was held in Valetta, Malta. The meeting on 13th October was dedicated to advancing the work of the Action’s Core Group. Among other topics, the Working Group leaders and horizontal leaders gave updates on their work in the 2nd Grant Period and planned future steps. They discussed the strategy on outputs and the dissemination strategy, reflected on inter-working groups interaction and sustainability of the Network, advanced on the budget for the 3rd Grant Period and worked on the agenda for the 7th MC meeting in 2022. On 14th October, Working Group 1 and Working Group 5 came together to update each other and further the objectives surrounding coordination of the Action and dissemination of results. Among other topics, some items addressed were dissemination at policy level, building knowledge exchange, the dissemination strategy, the role and membership of the Early Career Investigators Group, the website, and several products aimed at dissemination, such as videos, a flyer of the Network and the autumn 2021 newsletter.

  • Spain national meeting

    Sevilla - University of Sevilla
     October 8, 2021

    The Spanish national meeting was held on 8th October 2021 in Seville, Spain. It was hosted by the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Seville and organised by Victoria Hidalgo. 17 participants attended in person, another 4 participants joined online. The main purpose of the national meeting was to create a shared workspace among the different members of Spain who have collaborated on EurofamNet. Within the framework of EurofamNet objectives, the Spanish national working group has set the specific objective of analyzing the Spanish programs identified by WG3 in depth, checking to what extent they meet the quality standards established by the network and, above all, make proposals that enable the implementation of improvements in family support services in Spain.

  • Croatia national meeting

    Online
     September 28, 2021

    The meeting was held on-line on 28th September 2021. It was hosted by the Faculty of Law University of Zagreb and organized by Croatian MC members – Nina Pećnik and Ivana Dobrotić. The total number of participants in the meeting was 18. In the first part of the meeting, Nina Pecnik presented key features of the CA18123 and the EurofamNet. It was followed by participants presenting their engagement with the area of family support – related policy, practice and/or research. The second part of the meeting consisted of 3 presentations: Ivana Dobrotić (WG2) presented main findings from the report and policy brief “Family policy and family support in Europe: International and European policy frameworks and standards”, Nina Pećnik (WG3) presented results of the national survey on adoption of EBP and Milena Koren (National Working Group member and participant of the stakeholders’ workshop) presented drivers, experiences and challenges of adopting EBP in Croatia, including the results of the research with providers of parenting support and family support services in Croatia on conducting evaluation. The final part of the meeting provided opportunity for feedback on presentations and discussion of needs and challenges in advancing family support provision and research in Croatia.

  • UK national meeting

    Leeds
     September 17, 2021

    The UK national meeting was held on 17th September 2021 in Leeds, hosted by Policy & Practice Group leader Andy Lloyd and Working Group 2 co-leader Harriet Churchill. The main aims set for the meeting were developing EurofamNet UK-based networks and activities, developing a better understanding of family support developments undertaken by members of the UK EurofamNet group and guest attendees, and strengthening dialogue and links between EurofamNet and UK-based researchers and practitioners working with interests in family support, children’s rights and children’s services. An overview of EurofamNet aims and activities, as well as of the UK group was given. There was space for attendees to get to know each other, sharing their areas of interest and expertise. A group discussion was held related to current issues, concerns and challenges related to family support in the UK and finally, next steps in working together were discussed.

  • 6th EurofamNet Management Committee Meeting

    Online
     June 16, 2021 to June 18, 2021

    The 6th EurofamNet meeting was held online from the 16th to the 18th June 2021. It was originally planned to take place in Nicosia, Cyprus, but was moved online due to the Covid-19 situation. On Wednesday the 16th, the meetings started with the Policy and Practice Group meeting. Key issues in Family Support were discussed, such as digital poverty, gender gap in work / life /homeschooling balance and equality. The Core Group coordination meeting also took place on Wednesday, followed by the Plenary meeting in which the Working Group leaders updated the network participants on the advances made regarding outputs and deliverables. Working Group meetings were held on Thursday the 17th. Working Group 1 and 5 held a successful joint meeting for the first time, given the increasing connections between Coordination and Dissemination activities. On Friday, representatives from 28 out of 34 COST countries attended the Management Committee meeting. Among the decisions taken were the approval of two deliverables from Working Group 4, the approval of the integration of Working Group 1 and 5, the agreement on establishing a Young Researchers Group and the approval of Virtual Networking Tools. The meetings were closed by a very interesting Knowledge Exchange session, in which the voices of academics, practitioners, policy representatives and families and children were heard.

  • WG3 April 2021 small meeting

    Tenerife (Spain)
     April 12, 2021 to April 16, 2021

    A WG3 small meeting has been held in Tenerife (Spain) from April 12th to 16th 2021. The main focus of the meeting was to work on the catalogue of family support programmes from all participating countries. Significant progress has been made in relation to the database, the results exploitation and the programme classification strategy.

  • 5th EurofamNet Management Committee Meeting

    Online
     February 3, 2021 to February 5, 2021

    The fifth meeting of the Action was held as an online event from February 3rd to February 5th, 2021. This was in place of our face-to-face meeting planned for Malta for the same dates. The meeting commenced on February 3rd with coordination meetings, one between Working Group 1 and Working Group 5, and one involving the Actions coordinating group. The newly titled Policy and Practice Group also met on 3rd, including among their discussions the identification of key current issues for the actions to be aware of. Throughout the day on Thursday 4th, individual working Group meetings proceeded involving a mix of progress reviews and plans for next steps on key tasks and deliverables. Representatives from 30 out of 34 COST countries attended the Management Committee meeting on Friday February 5th. We welcomed the Action’s scientific officer, who provided insights in a number of areas. She noted ongoing discussion with the European Commission on how to support to the Actions, for example, by providing more flexible networking tools. Presentations by Working Group Leaders indicated progress across all of the key tasks and deliverables. Notably, reflecting the stage of the action as it moves towards the completion of a number of key outputs, there was focused discussion on how best to move from knowledge generation to effective dissemination. Among the decisions from the MC meeting were the re-designation of the coordinating group as the Core Group, changes to the Training School schedule, agreement to support collation of the action’s second report and approval of membership applications proposed Working Group 1.

  • 4th EurofamNet Meeting - Online

    Online
     June 29, 2020 to July 1, 2020

    The fourth meeting of the Action was to be held in Riga (Latvia), but due to the Covid pandemic was held online from June 29th to July 1st 2020 inclusive. In spite of the online modality, the meeting was a huge success, encompassing a plenary meeting for all action members, our first Stakeholders group meeting, individual Working Group planning meetings and our formal Management Committee meeting. In all, 93 participants from 31 different countries took part in the meeting. The participants made progress across all our work-packages, with significant attention to planning national and programme surveys, dissemination and policy influence activities. We continued our exchange work started in Malaga, on the general theme of Family Support in a time of Covid 19. Stakeholders Make Mothers Matter (Johanna Schima), Netherlands Youth Institute (Caroline Vink) and the European Social Network (Ronan Mangan) all provided inputs. The Management Committee formally approved key deliverables: the EurofamNet bottom-up, dialogic and double-layered structure; the map of international agencies on programme evaluation and quality standards; and the map of international agencies on skill standards. Important other decisions were the agreement on the appointment of Sviatlana Karpava and Branko Boskovic to their role as WG5 co-leaders to support Vivian Iliadou, and agreement on Nicosia (Cyprus) as the venue for our June 2021 meeting, because of the consequences of the recent earthquake affecting Zagreb.

  • 3rd meeting Eurofamnet working group meeting, workshop and MC meeting

    Porto – University of Porto
     February 5, 2020 to February 7, 2020

    The third Action meeting was attended by 67 Action Participants representing 30 of the participant countries. A significant focus of the meeting was planning/review of implementation of data collection processes to take place in 2020: State of the Art report on Family Support in Europe, cataloguing of Evidence Based Family Support programmes and quality standards, and mapping of agencies and training standards.  Advances were made towards operationalising the dissemination strategy, utilising our map of European stakeholders, and developing national working groups to support our data collection in the short term, and to serve as part of the Actions dual-layered structure for the medium to longer-term.  At the meeting, we commenced what will be an ongoing process of information exchange between action members, with presentation by stakeholders Annmie Drieskens of COFACE and Andy Lloyd of Leed Council in the UK.