The CaixaProinfancia programme, launched in 2007, seeks to promote the socio-educational development of children and adolescents from families in a situation of relative or extreme poverty, with the aim of enhancing their opportunities and thus breaking the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Factsheet    

• Geographical scope: Spain.

• Source: Fundació ”la Caixa”.

Children’s family and socioeconomic context determines their performance in the education system. According to OECD data (2016), in Spain 40% of schoolchildren from disadvantaged families did not acquire the established core competencies, in comparison with 8% of those who lived in non-disadvantaged families.

The programme seeks to develop and apply a model for comprehensive social and educational action that helps to enhance the social and educational development opportunities of children, adolescents and their families. Specifically, it aims to encourage the development of the children’s competencies with a view to improving their processes of social inclusion and their independence. The purpose is to nurture the development of the children included in the programme in their family, school and social setting.

CaixaProinfancia performs an all-round intervention by means of a systematic support process designed, coordinated and supervised by a professional who acts as case practitioner. Access to the programme can be by direct application or by referral from social services or other social organisations. Once a child is found to meet the requirements of the programme and his or her needs have been assessed, he or she is offered support in one or more of the areas covered by the sub-programmes: educational reinforcement, non-formal education and free time, family educational support, personal and family psychotherapeutic care, and health promotion.

The methodology used in the interventions is intended to stimulate the empowerment and the resilience of the children and their families, who become agents for change. From the starting point of detected needs, a personalised work plan is drawn up, and is adapted ad hoc depending on the changes that are observed. This plan is usually developed over a school year, after which the results are examined and a decision is reached as regards continuity in the programme.

The programme undergoes continuous evaluation by the CaixaProinfancia Observatory, which confirms its effectiveness. Thus, for example, early school leaving during compulsory secondary education is reduced to 6.3% among children taking part in the programme, as opposed to 30% among children from a low socio-educational background as a whole. Another statistic that points in the same direction is that of the schooling success rate during compulsory secondary education, which reaches 77% among children taking part, whereas in the overall school population from these same backgrounds the figure stands at only 51%.