Description
The goal of the project is to get the biological parents involved in raising the children who, for various reasons, were placed in foster homes or under other forms of foster care. Biological parents are discriminated against and ignored in decision-making process concerning their children, they have difficulties with contacting the children. Meeting Room is a place where biological and foster parents could talk about children’s needs in a safe environment, spend time with the children, and take joint decisions about children’s future. Project outcome: individual plans drafted jointly by biological and foster families, describing joint efforts and nurturing relations with the child. Plans will be developed and implemented in cooperation. Restrictions on parental authority will also be defined during the project: i.e. the scope of biological family involvement, and the scope of foster family custody.
Summary of project results
"The experience of the Organization proves that biological parents have a hindered contact with their children who had been placed in foster families and they are ignored at making vital decisions concerning their children. The lack of these contacts makes it difficult for the children to build their identity and strengthens their sense of rejection. The objective of the project was to include the biological parents in the process of bringing up their children placed in foster families and creating a situation in which the foster parents and biological parents could understand each other better, and as well to work out and realize an individual plan concerning joint raising of the child and building contacts with the child. Thanks to the project implementation, 13 biological families have improved their contacts with 13 foster families, a genogram and individual plan have been created for 23 families, 3 biological families have regained their children, legal situation of 6 children has been regulated (including resigning the rights of custody and making the adoption of the children possible). The work was focused on the families and children (560 hours of individual meetings with families, children and their immediate environment and crisis interventions) and the institutions under charge of which the families stay (244,5 hours of consultations for Social Care Centers, Warsaw Family Support Center, courts ). The following workshops have been organized: of first aid (2 workshops 3 hours each, in total 7 participants), educational skills (5 workshops 4 hours each, in total 27 participants), nursing skills with individual consultations (10 hours, in total 8 participants), workshops on building a good contact with a child (7 meetings: an introductory one for all participants and 6 for biological mothers with their children). Meetings with parents were held, during which the diagnosis made and directions for works (12.5 hours) were thoroughly discussed. 20 diagnoses of children with regard to fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS) were made. And 10 hours of therapeutic meetings with a teenager, a victim of abuse were held. 27 biological families and 30 foster families and 36 children have benefited from the project's activities. As a result of addictions and other personal problems 7 families haven't made it till the end of the activities."
Summary of bilateral results