Welcoming refugees in Portugal: preliminary assessment through the voices of refugee families

The Refugee Support Platform (PAR – Plataforma de Apoio a Refugiados) was created in September 2015 through the establishment of a network of organisations and volunteers from the Portuguese civil society. PAR Families is a program that aims to provide support to refugee families in Portugal. PAR Families model implies that for each family of refugees arriving in the country there will be an institution directly responsible for the following dimensions: independent accommodation, food and clothing; support regarding access to healthcare services, education, labour market, Portuguese language classes and social and cultural integration. From the total of families (n = 73) hosted by PAR at the time data collection began (March 2018), members of 40 families were interviewed (35 women and 26 men). Through in-depth qualitative interviews the study gave voice to their perspectives as experiential experts of the PAR Families program, and with this gathering important feedback and recommendations our research aims to: (1) identify the good practices that should be maintained and reproduced with new refugee families that may be hosted by PAR; (2) recognise the aspects that appear as counter-productive to a successful integration and autonomisation of the refugee families in the six dimensions targeted by the PAR Program.