Programa ACT para educar crianças em ambientes seguros: percepção dos pais quanto à sua utilização frente à pandemia da Covid-19

Abstract

Parenting programs have been used as a strategy to prevent violence against children, helping parents to improve knowledge and forms of education through positive parenting. The ACT Program was developed by the American Psychological Association, for parents and caregivers of children aged from 0-8 and seeks to empower families to improve their parenting skills. This qualitative study aimed to understand the perception of parents participating in the ACT Program carried out in 2019 regarding the use of the program's learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Semi-structured online interviews were conducted with 15 parents/caregivers who participated in the ACT Program in 2019. The results indicated that parents used emotion regulation strategies, positive discipline and monitoring of the use of electronic media. Learning about the quality, content and children's time with electronic media was cited as crucial at a time when screen time has increased as a result of the pandemic. Based on the participants' reports, it is considered that the ACT Program helped in the management of situations faced in the pandemic, since the strategies used by parents were aligned with the objectives of the ACT Program. The results give the ACT Program external validity since the learning was kept after two years of the intervention and in a natural environment. These results indicated it was necessary to offer violence prevention programs to parents and caregivers, especially in adverse moments such as the COVID-19 pandemic.