Now What?: Preparing and Empowering Youth Leaving Care Erasmus Project

Project Title

Now What?: Preparing and Empowering Youth Leaving Care

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for youth

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Inclusion – equity; Youth (Participation, Youth Work, Youth Policy)

Project Summary

When a child’s own family is unable, even with support, to provide adequate care for the child, the State is responsible for ensuring appropriate alternative care. After official intervention, by their “State” parent children are placed into out-of-home care.
An estimated 1,8 million children in the Europe live in some form of alternative care, while 1 million lives in “orphanages” or childrens’ homes. More than 80% are not orphans. They are separated from their families because they are poor, disabled or from an ethnic minority, victims of abuse or victims of neglect. The effect of institutionalization on the physical, emotional and cognitive development of children and youth is detrimental, long-lasting and well-documented.

Most of these children in the EU Member States child welfare systems will simply “age out” of the system when they turn 18, without a family and without the skills to make it on their own. As young adults they are likely to have no support network, struggle to find employment and become dependent on the state for their basic welfare. Young adults leaving institutional care are more likely to fall victims of trafficking, exploitation, unemployment, homelessness and depression. With no experience of family life, many struggle when they become parents themselves, putting their children at risk of institutionalisation and transmitting the problem from one generation to the next.

Leaving home and starting life as an independent adult can be one of the most challenging steps in any young person’s life; becoming independent after leaving care can be especially daunting. Young care leavers are expected to become independent at a very early age, considerably younger than peers who grow up in their families. These young people face challenges without the usual safety nets on which to fall back. For young persons leaving the highly structured institutional care settings, becoming an independent and socially integrated adult is especially challenging and raises the risk of social exclusion.

The current provisions for care leavers, throughout Europe, is unclear, insufficient and all too often overlooked. It is no exaggeration to argue that care leavers are left behind and forgotten by those charged with the responsibility of ensuring their wellbeing; highlighting, thus, the systematic failures of the “Corporate” or “State” parents to safeguard the rights and wellbeing of its children.

The “Now What?” project aspires the provision of a cohesive and consistent package of support, information, advice and guidance to those young people leaving care aged 16-19 years old, so as to achieve a seamless transition into adulthood. The “Now What?” project aims at the development and delivery of an integrated approach in dealing with the preparedeness of care leavers to face the challenges of living an independent life, in compliance with the UN Recommendation in the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, which underscores the need to “prepare children to assume self-reliance and to integrate fully in the community, notably through the acquisition of social and life skills”.

The “Now What?” project is premised on the idea that investing in, and adequately resourcing, the acquisition of basic life skills for prospective care leavers is the single most important component for after care success and independence. The “Now What?” project will develop and undertake a comprehensive strategy to better enable care-experienced children in the following four (4) European countries:
• Romania,
• Portugal,
• Greece and
• Albania
to achieve their potential and deliver improvements in their educational, social and economic outcomes.

The “Now What?” project is comprised of the following two (2) distinct components:
— Life Skills Workshops
— After Care Plans

and is expected to contribute to the capacity building of:
— one hundred fifty (150) care leavers
— fifteen (15) care professionals
— one hundred fifty (150) mentors who will assist care leavers develop their After Care Plans.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 187201,14 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIVERSITATEA DE VEST DIN TIMISOARA & Country: RO

Project Partners

• Associação de Amigos da Criança e da Familia Chão dos Meninos
• Directia Generala de Asistenta Sociala si Protectia Copilului Timis
• ASOCIATIA SOS SATELE COPIILOR ROMANIA
• TO HAMOGELO TOU PAIDIOU
• ATHENS LIFELONG LEARNING INSTITUT EASTIKI MI KERDOSKOPIKI ETAIRIA
• COFAC COOPERATIVA DE FORMACAO E ANIMACAO CULTURAL CRL
• SOS FSHATRAT E FEMIJEVE SHQIPERI