Center for youth from alternative care. Jump into life – web platform

Association Play is a Croatian non-profit organization that was established in 1999. The main objective of its work is to provide rehabilitation, education, psycho-social and pedagogical help for young people at risk, their families and professionals who work with them in order to improve the quality of their lives and society in general. Apart from direct work with clients, Play is working continuously on sensitizing the community and decision makers to the problems of marginalized children and youth through research and different types of public activities.

Program is based on research of needs of youth in homes, post evaluation research (after 5 years of delivering services) and research of needs of youth after they left care. The evaluation of program’s services (concealing, life silks training, job sill training, peer support, technical assistance) has showed that the services respond to youth’s needs and are efficient (youth finds jobs more easily, feel more confident, know how to protect own rights..). When the leaders of the program asked young people to single out benefits from their participation in program, they emphasized practical topics such as searching for an apartment and a job, writing job applications, tips related to the job interview and budgeting. Also, they singled out the topics that are related to communication and establishing relationships with others.

Empowering children and young people from alternative care is carried out through individual and/or group psycho-socio-educational support. The first step in this process is to arrange an initial interview with young person to gather information about their life situation and their needs. That helps to adjust program activities as much as possible to the individual needs of each user.
During several months (which refers to the length of the program), program experts are working on development of life skills (communication and interpersonal skills, conflict resolution skills, critical thinking, respect for self and others, etc.) with young people who have just arrived in the institution.