The Regional Director for Social Solidarity reiterated today in Ponta Delgada that "family support policies will be reinforced during this legislative period." The Regional Government has awarded "priority status to these areas under the next Community Support Framework."

Speaking at the opening of the seminar "Família: Mudanças e Desafios; 15 anos a navegar com as famílias entre os séculos XX e XXI" (Family: Changes and Challenges, navigating with families for 15 years between the 20th and the 21st centuries), Natércia Gaspar pointed that these policies require the implementation of new intervention measures, the improvement of responses and the qualification of technicians and support infrastructures.

The Regional Director also assured the Government's commitment "to undertake efforts" in order to find a permanent space for the installation of the Centre for Family Therapy and Systemic Intervention, which has been a "strategic partner" of the Azorean Government in the area of family intervention.

"In the Azores, family support has always been given special attention by the Regional Government," Natércia Gaspar said, adding that this commitment is reflected in the "adoption of policies and measures designed to mitigate factors that put families in a situation of social vulnerability, particularly in the case of families with children and youngsters at risk."

"Family is the core of all social groups," underlined the Regional Director. In this context, the government official urged "the entire community to take up" the challenge of contributing and "streamlining the emergence of healthy family dynamics."

The Centre for Family Therapy and Systemic Intervention is a Private Social Solidarity Institution established in 1998 that has recently signed cooperation protocols with the Regional Directorate for Social Solidarity and with the Institute for the Social Development of the Azores.

This institution develops interventions to change attitudes and behaviours, hence promoting the growth and psychosocial development of individuals, couples, families and other human organisations with dysfunctions and relationship difficulties at a psychosocial level.