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234.Caregivers’ Engagement in Playgroups

Playgroups are community-based groups that bring together young children not attending formal education services and their caregivers for the purpose of play and social activities. Providing this service for families is important as we know that early childhood education has a significant impact on life outcomes.
Studies have been showing that higher levels of parental engagement in playgroups are associated with higher levels of attendance, and in turn these are associated with improvement in children learning competence and reductions in parental distress (Williams et al., 2015).
In Portugal, playgroups are being implemented as a small-scale experiment in 5 districts. Playgroups operate twice a week for two hours with two facilitators and one supervisor per district.
The aim of this study is to analyse the relationship between caregivers’ engagement and participants’ attendance in playgroups.
In our sample, we randomly selected 13 out of 25 playgroups operating. One month after their implementation, 14 facilitators completed a survey concerning caregivers’ engagement in the sessions (helping to plan, set up and pack up activities, Berthelsen et al., 2012).
Preliminary results indicate that higher caregiver attendance is significantly and positively correlated (rpb = .776, p < .05) with caregivers’ engagement in playgroups. At CIEAE2016, we will present results of the mediation analysis of engagement to attendance to outcomes.
These results highlight the importance of providing incentives for attendance to families who might not otherwise engage in playgroups on an ongoing basis, and the need to focus on factors associated with enhancing engagement for playgroup members.

Author(s):

Vanessa Russo    
ISCTE - Instituto Universitário
Portugal

Joana Alexandre    
ISCTE - Instituto Universitário
Portugal

M. Clara Barata    
Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade de Coimbra
Portugal

Catarina Leitão    
Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade de Coimbra
Portugal

Bruno Sousa    
Faculdade de Psicologia da Universidade de Coimbra
Portugal

Joana Freitas Luís    
Fundação Bissaya Barreto
Portugal