Last May, in Barcelona, the first edition of the I International Workshop on Family AccompanimentThe event was attended in person by more than 500 people from over 50 countries around the world, and it will also be possible to participate in recorded mode in the coming months. An event with a markedly practical and realistic approach, combining lectures with expert roundtables and networking.
Training people in the family today requires not only to transmit knowledge, but also to be capable of to be close to families. Be where the families are. Supporting them in discovering their own resources and being able to resolve the difficulties that all personal relationships entail is precisely what accompaniment is all about.
This paradigm shift implies an approach that goes beyond therapy, mediation or conflict resolution. While understanding all these aspects, the accompaniment aims to keep pace with the daily reality of most families, which go through - to a greater or lesser extent - crises and dilemmas.
The new family culture should be rebuilt more with good practices - with lifestyles - than with ideas, which are obviously also necessary. Mariolina Ceriottia neuropsychiatrist and family therapist from Milan, addresses a key issue: the intrinsic strength of bonds as the founding pillars of the family in the face of an increasingly individualized world. An optimistic view is complemented by Raphael Bonelli, Viennese psychiatrist, who deals with the management of family crises.
Other experts, such as the Frenchman Thierry Veyron La Croix, founder of La Maison des Families in Lyon, contributed their best practices in accompanying families from different countries and fields (social networks, radio, educational centers, professional offices, family pastoral care, etc.), with a clear backdrop: "accompanying families in the ordinary".
In the words of Juan José Pérez-Soba, professor at the John Paul II Institute on marriage and family in Rome, and "investing time", according to Rafael Lafuente, an expert in affective-sexual education, "we must be able to speak to young people about the beauty of love, sexuality and the family". with Mercadona languageso that the common people understand us.
For its part, María Pilar Lacorte, deputy director of the Institute for Advanced Family StudiesHe stressed that it is not enough to want to accompany in order to know how to accompany. It is important to learn, to be trained. It is contradictory that we train a lot for almost everything: career, masters, driving license, languages... and much less, or nothing, in that function or task that will occupy us all our lives: the development of our family life.
This is what the Institute organizing this event is dedicated to: studying what families are like today and what their real needs are, offering training to accompany them and helping them to develop competencies. With an optimistic and hopeful attitude, based on the conviction that the strength that binds the social fabric together lies in the quality of family ties.
Professor at the Faculty of Law of the International University of Catalonia and director of the Institute for Advanced Family Studies. She directs the Chair on Intergenerational Solidarity in the Family (IsFamily Santander Chair) and the Childcare and Family Policies Chair of the Joaquim Molins Figueras Foundation. She is also Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law at UIC Barcelona.
