Prevention of Impact of Traumatic Situations on Vulnerable Children
“…..To take and fulfil the agreed steps mean to have good luck to me. What does good luck mean to me? …To be at home with my mum and not to have to go to residential care”.
“The quotation from the assessment interview of the child with the members of the mobile team.”
The pilot methodological-development project whose implementation was going on in the locality of Prague Districts 8 and 14 in close cooperation with the Social and Legal Protection of Children Offices (SLPCO) and other institutions with whom the vulnerable child and its family is in touch on the everyday natural basis. The help of the mobile team (MT) was intended for children living, for a long period of time, in traumatizing situations that are not possible to be addressed/solved by the tools of social work used till this time within family strengthening.
The project applies the principle “Help to the child in the family, not the child from the family without help”. In practice, the MT's of professionals (psychologist/therapist, special pedagogue, social worker) were created based on the SLPCO's assessment according to the set criterions. Then MT worked with the child directly in the family/in its natural environment.
Within the project, STREP created methodological recommendations that will be further distributed. The methodological recommendations consist of experiences/steps/methods assessed by the members of MT, social workers of SLPCO, children and their parents as beneficial and helpful. The steps/methods included in the created material were introduced at the Thematic Family Strengthening Symposium: Field Multidisciplinary Diagnostic and Accompanying of the Child within SLPCO, that STREP held on 15th May 2014 in the National Technical Library in Prague under the auspice of the Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Mgr. Michaela Marksová – Tominová. The Symposium was attended by 106 professionals who influence the children's lives on the level of practice and the changes of the system.
The pilot project was supported by the Sirius Foundation in the period 10/2012 till 9/2014. The MT's helped 45 children. Based on the experiences from the implementation, feedbacks from SLPCO and results achieved in children and families, it is possible to consider the MT's work to be a new effective tool of SLPCO which is worth further attention.
After the support of Sirius Foundation ended, STREP in cooperation with Prague Districts 8 and 14 is seeking ways/possibilities of financial support on the system level. The both Prague Districts found resources to keep this kind of help for high risk vulnerable children and their families.