Development of a Leaflet to Raise Awareness About Parental Burnout, Designed With and for Workers From Psycho-Medico-Social Centres in Belgium

Details

Supervisors

Mikolajczak, Moïra ; Roskam, Isabelle

Faculty

Faculté de psychologie, logopédie, sexologie et des sciences de la famille

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences psychologiques, à finalité spécialisée

Abstract

Parental burnout (PB) represents a problem that can have devastating consequences for the parent, the couple, and the children. It is characterised by, among other things, an emotional distancing of the parent from the child, which can lead parents disengaging from their children’s education and schooling. It is therefore critical that front-line professionals are sufficiently informed to be able to act in a preventive manner. This article describes the construction, in collaboration with two Belgian psycho-medico-social (PMS) centres of an informative and awareness-raising leaflet for PMS agents. The leaflet was produced in two times. In the first one, the needs of PMS workers were targeted, and a draft leaflet was developed with the help of a PMS centre that had been trained on PB by our team. In the second one, another PMS centre — not previously trained in PB — evaluated the relevance of the content of the leaflet, providing comments and suggestions. The result of our work is a leaflet that constitutes the first awareness tool for PB designed for a specific profession in cooperation with the field workers themselves. Applications and future directions are discussed in the article.