Description
The objective of the project is to help families with at least one child who are struggling with difficulties that affect family life and the welfare of children in family. Trained volunteers visit vulnerable families at their homes for a couple of hours every week, listen to them, build on their strengths and help them work towards making changes that will make a long term difference in their life. “Home Start International” as a partner provides guidance, develops principles and has the scientific supervision of the project. Also, it shares with the project promoter good practices and sets the specific framework to work in.
Summary of project results
Social exclusion is a state that many families are experiencing nowadays. Those families are very difficult to approach. The methods used to tackle social exclusion leave significant dimensions uncovered; dimensions that could help the families create the circumstances so as to get out of the vicious circle of social exclusion, to regain their self-confidence and to be able to face their future with optimism.The project supported 48 vulnerable families in the areas of Athens and Pireaus, through volunteers – mainly parents themselves – at the homes of the families. This was accomplished through Home-Start program, that offers an approach at the physical environment of the families, builds relationships based on trust through their common parental experience, connects families with other services and the community for a holistic cover of needs and aims to strengthen the families in order for them to function independently. Moreover, a number of families were supported and braced in different ways such as recognizing the needs, networking and informing. Last, a large number of families were informed about the project and the services of Home Start through their participation in events and through publicity acts. During the project 4 educational/training workshops for volunteers took place (47 volunteers in total) and 2 executive stuff trainings (9 stuff members in total). 146 hours were devoted in these trainings. In addition the project produced 5 new evaluating tools. 2 concerned the monitoring and evaluation of the service towards the families, 1 concerned the evaluation of the project and its effect on the volunteers and 1 focused on the training programs. Two quality evaluations were conducted at the end of the project, one concerning the services towards the families and one on the volunteers. Last, through this project, a first draft of a guide for volunteers on ethics was edited. Through a small scaled quality research that was conducted by external researchers, the project was evaluated. The outcomes showed that the project contributed positively in improving the everyday function of the families and in its everyday organization, helped in improving the psychological stability of the members of the family and empowered their confidence, managed to network the families with community services and helped the parents to improve their parental skills and attitudes with positive outcomes for the children.
Summary of bilateral results