Prepare for leaving care – A system that works for professionals and young people

SOS Children's Village Croatia is a non-governmental organisation, providing family-like alternative care to children and young people without adequate parental care through 2 SOS Children's Vuillages and 4 Youth facilities. We also run 2 Family Strengthening programs to help the families at 2 counites in Croatia. We are also very active in advocacy for the rights of children at risk of losing or without adequate parental care. Out of our advocacy work for better services for young care leavers, together with our International office and 4 other SOS National Associations in Europe we have developed a project "Prepare for leaving care", aimed at training care professionals how to better prepare young care leavers, and also to advocate for more quality leaving care process and after-care services. One of the main building blocks in this project is participation of care-experineced young people, in the making of training materials, to co-training care professionals and shaping the recommendations for improvement of the social welfare system aimed at care-levaers in Croatia.

The practice within this project has been implemented with the aim of raising the level of awareness and knowledge of care professionals of the needs and rights the need to fullfill in working with young care leavers, and strengthening the system of support to them. Also, to increase the level of participation of young people leaving care in preparing for independent life, to take back control of the process and to be the ownes of that process. The goals were achieved through the realisatioon of project activities.

The practice within the project was to develop training materials for the training, to organise and run 5 6-day training seminars for various profiles of care professionals, either working in institutional care, NGO, foster care or SOS Children's Village. Also, one of the most important activities was to form a group of care experinced young people who would participate in every important part of the project, suzch as drafting the training materials, and co-train the care professionals together with professional trainers. The final important ativity was to draft recommendations based on the experience of young care-experienced people, care professionals and important stakeholders from the social welfare system, which are aimed at improving the existing system of preparation and support of young people leaving care.