The creation of mechanisms to attract new foster families for children and young people is a challenge for the Association for the Protection of Girls and Families (AIPAR) of Faro, which seeks to increase this response, said the president.
Maria Filomena Rosa, president of AIPAR, explained to Lusa that the institution includes a shelter in Faro and households that receive minors, but the big challenge is to make the support programs known to the public and find new households available and with conditions to welcome children and young people at risk.
Currently with seven families certified to host children and five children placed in these homes, AIPAR also has the responsibility of finding host families capable of receiving minors and this communication work is not easy due to limited human resources.
Maria Filomena Rosa stated that, since AIPAR established the agreement with Social Security to be a framework institution for children and young people, in November 2022, “the struggle to attract families began”.
According to the president of AIPAR, it is up to the supporting institutions themselves to “find families who generously want to take part in this adventure, which is to help improve the life and emotional development” of a child or young person.
“And, in addition to finding families, we have to follow up on them, which is a megalomaniacal effort. So, we have to prepare families, provide training, evaluate, and when, which is the case at the moment, we already have children and young people integrated into foster families, we have to carry out systematic and regular monitoring to get an idea of how things are happening”, he observed.
Maria Filomena Rosa acknowledged that “it is very difficult to get the message across” to the public and the “great difficulty” has been “finding families”, arguing that associations have to “transform themselves into communication and marketing institutions”, because technicians They understand that families interested in foster care were unaware of these programs before contacting the association.
Highlighting the importance of rigorous monitoring and monitoring of families to provide security to minors, biological families with descendants in the care of associations or Commissions for the Protection of Children and Adolescents, the person responsible praised the work carried out in a solidarity marathon of ideas that brought together citizens and professionals from different areas to find solutions in this matter.
Called Social Hackathon, the initiative, which took place in September, in Faro, had two “interesting” results, allowing not only to talk about this subject “to people who are not from the social areas” and who had never had contact with the topic, but also to call professionals from the technology sector, who are now collaborating with the association, he highlighted.
Counting on the collaboration of these volunteers, the association can now have “the help and support of communication specialists” and “people linked to technology companies” in defining dissemination strategies and standardizing messages to try to attract more foster families.
“I can give the example of a wonderful video that was produced and that can serve us as campaign material”, she exemplified, showing her conviction that the work carried out by everyone will allow us to increase the number of foster families.
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