Ana Isabel Pereira

“Just a click away” – Web-based interventions for parents: Innovative and effective ways to support parents and children

Research shows that parents have difficulty accessing parental support services and that only a small percentage of parents in need receive effectively professional support. Low recruitment and retention rates in parenting programs are frequent, compromising the reach and effectiveness of these interventions. Parents have to face several obstacles to attend in-person parenting programs, and this is even more true for parents in vulnerable situations. Online parenting interventions can increase parents’ enrolment and decrease drop-out because they are easier to access and complete and reduce obstacles that parents must face to attend and complete in-person parenting programs (e.g. stigma, lack of accessible services, transportation, conflict with professional duties and family activities). In this symposium, we will present different internet administered programs to support parents developed by European researchers. These interventions have different objectives (e.g. promotion of parent’s mental health; promotion of positive parenting) and target parents in different conditions. We will also present a systematic review and meta-analysis regarding the effectiveness of parental web-based interventions to promote a healthy diet in young children through the modification of parents’ feeding practices. With this symposium, we intend to disseminate web-based interventions informed by evidence and discuss the potentialities and the specificities of these interventions.

CV

Ana Isabel Pereira is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon. She received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from Coimbra University (2007). Her relevant research has centered on the study of parenting (parenting styles, practices, and self- regulation) and children’s psychopathology and health. More recently, she has been studying psychological interventions informed by evidence and the processes of therapeutic change in psychological interventions with youth and parents (e.g. motivation to engage in the interventions; processes that explain why the interventions work). She published several articles in national and international peer-reviewed journals, books and books chapters and coordinated different research projects, in which she supervised Ph.D. and Master students.