About the project

A project that facilitates easier entry into independent life for a child leaving a children’s home.

Accompanying a child on his journey towards successfully becoming a member of our society and providing them with the possibility of getting to know ordinary family life.

• They are children, the same as we have at home, but they just weren ‘t so lucky…
• Their biological families are either not competent or not willing to properly take care of these children...
• At some time they will have to stand on their own two feet…
• They lack the model of a functional family, which even the best children’s home is unable to replicate…
• They often become the target of critics for the fact that they do not know how to become a member of society…
• But it is not really their fault! They do not know how to achieve this as they lack concrete example…

Help these children to integrate into normal life!

You yourself could support a particular child!

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed  him for a lifetime.”

(A japanese proverb)

The aim of the project FIND ME is to make it easier for as many children as possible to integrate successfully into society after leaving the children’s home  -  the help taking the form of helping to accompany adolescents growing up in a children’s home on their journey into independent life.

The project is aimed at children of an older school age, and adolescents living in children’s homes in the Czech Republic, children who will continue to live with us in our society. It involves targeting assistance at a particular child who is growing up, for many different reasons, in a children’s home, and takes the form of personal contact with the child. It should help as many children as possible to find a contact person outside the children’s home -  their  “PATRON”, who will be in contact with the child (either in writing or in person) already during the time when the child is in the home, and assist the child at the point when they leave the children’s home and at the beginning of their independent lives.
Most children, at the point of departure from the children’s home, cannot cope with organizational matters which are everyday things for the rest of the population and they have no-one to turn to for advice… they don’t know where to go, where to find employment…
A large percentage of these children return to their biological families, who were, and still are not, able to take care of them.
The result of this is that these children fail in adulthood in establishing traditional partnerships and in the bringing-up of their own children.

Most of the children’s homes are capable, with the help of the sponsors, of ensuring for the children a problem-free life on the material side. The children do not suffer on the material side during their time in the children’s home. But these children do not understand the real value of money, they often have negative experiences from their original families and it is almost impossible for them to get to know the world of normal social ties within normal family relationships, which very much complicates their transition from the children’s home to independent life.

Specific help for the children:

• The establishment of social and, in some cases, even emotional ties outside of the children’s home.
• The possibility of getting to know how things function and to observe relationships within a normal family.

Programme specifications

• Absolutely targeted assistance  - i.e. Direct support for a particular child.
• The support for a child who, in some way, is liked by the “Patron”, based on the basic indications that are at his disposal (hobbies, age, gender, region).
• A choice of the form of contact (written or personal) and the intensity of contact with the child.
• The possibility for the “Patron” to participate for free in the seminars about host care within the project, where he will be getting to know more about what this form of help involves.

Contact with a child  -  more HERE

Contact with a child was intended primarily as a suitable complementary support to a financial support for the child (Project Support me), designed in such a way that the supporter of the child would get a direct feedback from the child. A child would have the possibility to better understand who is helping him and for what reason. Simultaneously is contact with the child also an independent form of assistance.

The “Patron” can be in contact with a particular child in:

• Writing  -  contact with the child in written form (letters, emails, Skype, Facebook).
• Personally  -  visits to the children’s home (the consent of the child and the relevant children’s home is required).
• Personally  -  visits for the child to the “Patron’s”  family (so-called host care).

Help from the “Patron” can also take the form of, for example, accompanying the child to after school clubs in which he is interested, open days at schools where the child would like to carry on with his studies, and other activities above and beyond what the employees of the children’s homes cannot  manage.

In cases of interest from both sides, it is possible and desirable to stay in contact with the child after their leaving the children’s home. To, therefore, help further with advice, opinions, recommendations, or your experiences during the first years of his steps into independent life.

Alternative forms of contact could involve offers of employment for a child who is leaving the children’s home, connected with the partial supervision of the child at the beginning of his journey into adulthood  -  providing accommodation at the transitional point after leaving the children’s home; helping a young person, a young family or a single mother without family back-up (in the form of visits to the household and perhaps then taking care of a child or helping with housework).
These forms of help are tackled in our project Help me into life.

Host care (Integrating a child into a family) - more here

A practical example of a functional family is, for a child living in institutional care, the best form of help for their inclusion in life outside the children’s home. One of the ways to help children who have a very low chance of returning to their family home or of finding a substitute family, is the idea of host care, which includes visits, later weekends and in some cases to stay for holidays in the child’s host family.
The aim of these visits is to give the children from a children’s home a chance to get to know the way a normal functional family works, to join in, for at least a short while, in the life of these families, to make stable emotional relationship outside of the children’s home and find motivation for positive behaviour themselves, which can significantly help in their psychological growth.
Host care is appropriate for children who are capable of accepting and understanding it and it should be available to every child who is interested in it, and who doesn’t have a high chance of returning to their own family or even to a foster family. It is not recommended for young children (under 10 years), who very easily and quickly establish emotional feeling towards the host family and are unable to comprehend the necessity of returning to institutional facilities.

In the case of host care, it is not advisable to act in haste  -   applicants should not make a rash decision!
It should be a weighed-up decision that should be well thought through ahead of time with all members of the existing family.
We offer parties interested in this form of help free inclusion in a seminar on host care, within the project ‘Find me….
You can find more information about host care under the link Host Care.