VulneraS Project: Childrearing, Abandonment and Sociocultural Vulnerability. Situational Analysis and Intervention Proposals.
(CSO2017-83101-C2-1-R)
In the last 9 years, the overall economic crisis and its devastating effects upon large social sectors have led to an increasing number of poor households (or being at risk of poverty). This social impoverishment has created a dynamic of convergent fragilities: on the one hand, the loss of jobs and the consequent decrease in many households’ income. On the other, the contraction of health care services and the provision of public resources aimed at alleviating moderate and severe vulnerability situations.
All that occurs in a socio-cultural, historical and economic context in which new family realities and emerging social phenomena have been detected. Such forms led to, among other phenomena, different options for ascription and child rearing, new gender roles in relationships and the (re)configuration of social support networks – both formal and, above all, informal -, as well as the need to assess the quality of public policies and the strategies of social and political actors directly involved in this issue.
It is also noteworthy that, especially in the social sciences, a special emphasis has been placed on its impact on children in the last five years. In the studies on child poverty, a situation of great depth and low visibility in the social agenda has gone unnoticed: that part of the childhood that is considered, not conjunctural, but structurally vulnerable.
Faced with this reality, and in accordance with the objectives of the State Research Plan and Horizon 2020 goals, we aim, on the one hand, to adequately identify new social needs in relation to upbringing in vulnerable contexts arising from deep social transformations in parenting and care. We will focus specifically in the following areas: (a) new extended parental care, (b) child protection, (c) health and (d) education, being necessary to integrate the bio-psycho- vulnerability and the role of media and advertising campaigns in the intervention to alleviate the problem. And on the other hand, we aim to develop and provide new solutions that can contribute to respond adequately to those needs. These topics will be addressed from a multidisciplinary perspective (researchers and professionals trained in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Physical Anthropology, Psychology, Medicine, Social Work, Pedagogy and Audiovisual Communication).