Residential Care Program

The residential care groups are intended for young people till the age of 18 who are experiencing long-lasting conflicts in their family. Youngsters might also have personal problems and difficulties with social integration, facing lack of school motivation and working habits and can also be traumatized due to neglection or abuse. Along dysfunctional educational patterns (ex. overprotective, spoiled) and family roles youths might need also help with learning social skills, solving daily challenges and above all assistance for responsible and independent life. Formally speaking, we accept youngsters with fewer opportunity (children and adolescents with behaviour and personality disturbances) and we are mainly focused on a improvements in personal growth and behaviour, school/academic success and better family relationships. Educators provide councelling for parents and closely colaborate with class teachers, therapists, school councelours and other “important persons” in youngsters social network.

Altough the family court accomodates a youngster in a residential home according to its profesional opinion youths are expected to collaborate and live in residential care unit voluntarily with parents consensus. Residential Group Črnuška Gmajna accepts only youngsters older than 14 years because of the its concept, working methods and level of aquired independence for taking care of oneself.

In our residential group are four educators employed. By professions the educators are social pedagogue, social worker, sports pedagogue and psychologist, what makes the heterogeneous approaches at work with youths possible.

Self Independent Living

“Self Independent Living” program is a differentiated way of implementing an educational program in which a young person lives independently and is dislocated outside the home educational institution, from whom he receives material and counseling assistance in the processes of final independence, and in cases where return or stay in a parent or substitute family is no longer possible or it’s pointless. They have to live completely independently, while in addition to financial assistance, they also need relatively regular monitoring and support by the mentor. Thus, the youth is moving towards the transition to independence and the ability to live independently.

The conditions that young people have to fulfill in order to stay in a that program are divided into general and specific, which are defined for each individual individually according to his individualized treatment program. In general, however, youths need to decide for themselves on this (voluntary) basis, accepting the conditions and duties that are defined in the agreement.

Alex, who started living in a youth apartment in June 2019, describes what this experience means to him:

– I have complete control over my free time

– I have to make sure I have food in the fridge at all times, as well as washing and cleaning the room

– nobody bothers me when I work

– I bear the consequences of my own decisions

– I can spend more time on my hobbies (guitar, piano)

– I have a place that I can truly say is just mine

Voluntary Service

Our organization will welcome any volunteer regardless of gender, race or religion, however we do desire that the volunteer is empathetic, sensitive, communicative, persistent, responsible, reliable, creative and is able to take initative. We also have considerable experience with mischellaneous voluntary work as we every year host students mainly from the Faculty of Education and Faculty of Social Work at the University of Ljubljana to do their mandatory internship.

International projects within Erasmus+ program

We have experiences with international projects such as youth exchanges, hosting and sending EVS volunteers and youth initative. We put efforts to expand our horizons by participating in new projects every year, as we find that the experience and perspective gained from those benefit all of the participants. Our organization´s aim is to positively influence on young people with fever opportunities to become active in every aspects of their lives and to gain a key competences also trough non-formal education. We strive to strenghten their foreign proficency level, increase their tolerance towards different cultures, enable them to aquire new skills and knowledge, and to motivate them to participate in programs like Erasmus+.

Our residential care group was a partner organization in several youth exchanges from Portugal, Finland, Spain and Hungary through the Erasmus+ (also Youth in Action) program. We also carried out one very successful youth initative where we sent our voluntary co-worker to France via the EVS project.