Competências dos profissionais de apoio à família: Contributos de uma revisão de livros e manuais.

Family support services are characterized by a multiplicity of professionals with different backgrounds, and the required skills are not clearly defined. The main objective of the present work was to systematize the workforce skills in family support through the analysis of books and manuals. The procedures of a systematic literature review were adopted, and some online databases were used (Scientific Online Knowledge Library from Portugal; Google books; Macedonian National Library; and JSTOR digital library from the United States). The main descriptors included books and manuals published only in English, between 1995 and 2020. 48 books and manuals were selected because they revealed content related to workforce skills in family support. They were analyzed considering categories defined a priori (Publication date, Publisher, Publisher(s), Manual/Book Title), and categories emerging from the materials and defined a posteriori (Subject; Research and practice; Research and practice; Knowledge development; Assessment; and Intervention). The main themes of the publications referred to Mental Health, Psychology and Social Work, and the main specific contents were related to Knowledge Development, Intervention, Research and practice, and Assessment. Few books were specifically dedicated to the development of the workforce skills in family support. Many of the books were not available online and that constitutes a limitation of this study, and the results cannot be generalized. The selected books/manuals showed the absence of standardized guidelines for the workforce skills in family support, indicating the need of more research and work on the topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]