Meeting Points for Children and Parents of the French Community in Belgium as structures to prevent parental burnout:the perception of professionals

In one hand meeting points for children and parents in Belgium have been created to prevent childhood issues as well support parenting (ONE, 2017). Childhood issues have a direct impact on parenting efficacy, parenting beliefs, and coping skills. Additionally, when they are low, they can increase frustration and arritability towards children (Heren et al., 2012). On the other hand the constant exposition of parents to stress can lead them to develop what has been called parental burnout syndrome (Roskam, Brianda & Mikolajczak, 2017). Even if some intervention strategies have been set up, research is still limited to lead to proper prevention programs (Mikolajczak, Raes, Avalosse & Roskam, 2018). Due to the parenting determinants touched in meeting points and the risk factors of parental burnout, the hypothesis of this research is that meeting points may have an important role in what concerns to prevent parental burnout. To answer this research question we addresed a mix method research favorizing qualitative approach to collect data of the perceptions of field experts, the professionals of meeting points from 11 structures in Belgium. Our main finding was that meeting points functioning support parenting and increase parents resources reducing the risk of parental burnout.