Accompany, advise and strengthen families

20.10.20 (Ulla Peters/Julia Jäger)

Our cooperation partner Sporen (https://www.sporen.be/home) is a youth welfare organisation from Leuven, Belgium, with whom we have worked fruitfully in recent years. They have described the core aspects of a safety-oriented practical approach in their own working methods.

For further development of these practice models, it is interesting to note and discuss that Sporen – in all its different areas of work (such as home visits, intensive residential care or crisis intervention) – focuses on working with families.

The approach is not only to include the family of origin, but the so-called “extended family”, described in the “Manual family counselling” as “everybody who is related to the family in a non-professional way”. Following Sporen, this comprises not only grandparents, aunts, uncles etc. but also neighbours, friends and acquaintances.

One principle here is that knowledge protects. Thus, many aspects of the way of working, as it is fundamental in SOP, are aimed at enabling an understanding of what is happening in the planning of help for all those involved. In that way they are empowered to follow the process and to actively participate.

At the same time a sustainable network is established to support families in need, who are often also isolated.

TransNet SOP Luxembourg has translated the “Manual family counseling” from English to French and German. It can be downloaded here.