Successful start

After leaving residential institutions, children face the following key challenges:

• Lack of support from an experienced adult
• Material and financial difficulties, including: access to food and clothing, payment of utility bills and repayment of debts, health-related needs: medical check-ups and treatment, for students: the need to purchase stationery and materials for vocational training, for young mothers and fathers: covering expenses related to childcare, treatment, and education of their children.
• Employment-related challenges, such as: searching for a job and securing employment, exhausting work conditions, low-paid or unstable jobs
• Housing-related problems, including: lack of permanent housing, the need to obtain, purchase, exchange, or improve living conditions (including dormitory rooms), getting registered for housing assistance, establishing legal residence or official registration.

Many of these issues are also relevant to children from disadvantaged or vulnerable families.

A family in difficult life circumstances is one that is unable to cope with its own problems and requires assistance from the state or specialists. Children from such families need external support, as their closest relatives — their parents — may lack the capacity or the willingness to provide proper conditions for their upbringing, development, education, or medical care.

Our 20 years of experience working with these children clearly demonstrates the importance of timely support, especially during the first years of their transition to independent life.

The ‘Successful Start’ project focuses on supporting individual care-leavers during the early years of their vocational or higher education.