Welcome

Dear colleagues,

With great pleasure, we would like to invite you to the 1st International Scientific Conference of the Department of Psychology at the Catholic University of Croatia, which will be held on the 7th and 8th of December 2017, in Zagreb. The theme of this year’s conference is “Protection and promotion of the well-being of children, youth, and families”.

The well-being of children, youth, and families in its widest meaning refers to their positive development and achievement of all potentials and is determined by the combination of their individual characteristics and characteristics of the context in which they live. It is well known that individual characteristics, relatively stable and consistently contribute to well-being, but the contribution of the characteristics of the context, especially in interaction with different individual characteristics, is not researched enough yet. The social context of life in modern society, as well as in Croatia, is characterised by various difficulties, uncertainties, and challenges with which children, young people, and families are faced. Therefore, the important and contemporary question is about the possibilities of action to protect and promote the well-being of children, youth, and families. This issue is particularly important for psychologists, as well as for professionals from related fields, who work in the field of well-being and who can actively contribute to the well-being of children, youth, and families.

To educate ourselves, improve our work, and finally work together, it is necessary to meet and share knowledge, opinions, ideas, experiences, and examples of good practice. Therefore, the goal of the conference is to give a podium from which psychologists, together with professionals from related fields, will exchange scientific and professional knowledge and present examples of good practice in the field of child, youth, and family well-being. Through open and constructive communication, we want to try to offer answers to some open questions and challenges, but also set some new ones and direct the further work of professionals in the field. In the context of collaboration, we want to jointly create recommendations and offer them to important actors in society to improve the overall work on protection and promotion of the well-being of children, youth, and families.

At the conference, we will address different thematic areas, some of which are: early development and parenting, risk and protective factors in development, role of family and close relationships in development, youth in the labour market, children and families living in risk and adverse living circumstances, development of individual resistance, counselling and therapeutic work with children, young people and families, programmes and policies aimed at improving well-being, and trends and perspectives of demographic development in Croatia.

We consider the theme of the conference to be extremely important because protection and promotion of the well-being of children, youth, and families are a significant contribution to the successful development of the whole society. Therefore, we invite you to actively join and participate in the work of the conference by proposing thematic symposium, individual presentations, poster presentations, roundtables, and other forms of work during the conference. We are sure that with your contribution and collaboration the thematic areas will be expanded.

We hope you will recognise the importance of this conference and join us in our work during the conference.

We hope to see you in Zagreb on the 7th and 8th of December 2017.

On behalf of the Programme Committee

Marina Merkaš, PhD

News

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