In the context of rapid socio-demographic and economic changes families need to be supported multidimensional. Quality services and high professional skills during their life course are crucial. Presented study aims to identify the international organizations working in the field and describes and catalogues available evidence on basic professional competencies of family support workforces.
In line with this general purpose, websites of international organizations oriented on families with children and youth in various fields (psychology, social work, health, law etc.) were examined and analyzed using the content analysis method. Based on identification items as level of organization, organization’s role, sector, target beneficiaries, three interconnected maps have been developed: the map of family/children support international organizations/agencies (46 organizations); the map related to family therapy, occupational therapy, family educators and family support paraprofessionals (12 organizations) and the map related to youth support work (30 organizations). An important component in the content analysis was the identification and overview of listed professional skills promoted by the organizations on their work on family support. The information gained from the content analyses of organizations’ websites highlighted some gaps related to acknowledgement and broad representation of skills used in family supportwork: most of organizations do not present an available plain definition of competency/skills framework listed in general or in a separate document; limited evaluations of skills or references to a standard frame, rarely, some information being limited to the job description; multi-disciplinary approaches of the family support skills are not yet common practice.
Implications of findings are discussed in the context of further research of family support, development of a network of organizations in the field, common and separate quality standards of well defined and widely represented professional skills etc.