Federation of Parents’ Committees of Quebec | A study to take the pulse of families

A pandemic, education strikes, inflation: how are young people and their parents doing, with all these upheavals? The Federation of Parents’ Committees of Quebec (FCPQ) is launching a major survey this Tuesday to find out how these “social crises” affect families.

“How are our families in Quebec, how are our children? »

This is the question that the Federation of Parents’ Committees of Quebec, which brings together parents from more than 90% of the province’s school service centers, will ask in the coming weeks.

The “concern” of this federation comes from the pandemic. “Our most popular webinars are on mental health among young people, anxiety, depression,” says Mélanie Laviolette, president of the FCPQ.

To conduct a “major national survey” and put together the questionnaire, the parents’ group joined forces with the D^D Mélissa Généreux, medical advisor at the Estrie Regional Public Health Department.

“We wanted to identify the experiences that were had during the strike by parents and children, the different difficulties, the concerns when returning to school. We are as much in the spectrum of psychological well-being as the issues of educational success,” illustrates the D^D Generous.

“There is a context of social crises”

During the pandemic, she and her team conducted surveys to assess the psychological health of young people. The FCPQ study is inspired by this.

“The themes are not the same, but it is the spirit of saying: there is a context of social crises. The strike was one, but there is the context of labor shortage, the difficulties of the school system, inflation, the issues of food insecurity. There is also the post-pandemic effect which colors the context,” says the D^D Generous.

For example, we ask questions about the time spent on screens, the number of school days missed, parents’ fatigue, and the use of private tutoring services.

“We hypothesize that [la grève] was probably harmful for at least part of the population. We ask several questions to profile the children and families who could have been most affected by these social crises,” continues the woman who is also a professor at the faculty of medicine at the University of Sherbrooke.

The questionnaire lasts approximately 10 minutes. It is aimed at parents, guardians or guardians of school-age children (1^D year of primary to 5^e secondary).

Coming out of the strike, Mélanie Laviolette says she has the impression “that with each strike, we see a slackening of motivation and involvement” in the school.

At the end of this survey, the FCPQ therefore wishes to use the results to implement “concrete actions”.