From Early Childhood Care to Family Empowerment: Impact Evaluation of a Family Support Program in Disadvantaged Contexts

Background Early childhood constitutes a sensitive period for promoting child development and reducing social inequalities. Family support programmes play a key role in strengthening parental competencies and improving family well-being in socially disadvantaged contexts.Methods A quantitative pre–post design was used with administrative and assessment data from 1,044 families and 1,217 children aged 0–3 years participating in Espacios Familiares 0–3, a community-based socioeducational family support programme implemented across nine autonomous communities in Spain. Parental competencies were assessed using the Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes (PICCOLO), and social vulnerability through the Social Vulnerability Scale for Families (SVSF).Results Participating families were predominantly headed by mothers, showed high rates of foreign origin and unemployment, and nearly two-thirds were two-parent households. Programme participation was associated with improvements in parental competencies across all dimensions, with greater gains among families with higher attendance, particularly those newly enrolled. Changes in social vulnerability were more modest, heterogeneous, and concentrated among families entering the programme for the first time.Conclusions Findings support the positioning of socioeducational family support programmes as a key preventive and promotive component within broader child welfare systems. Attendance monitoring, differentiated strategies by entry stage, and integrated designs combining educational accompaniment with social support are essential levers for practitioners and programme managers.