Child and youth homes in Hungary and Switzerland want to increase the chances that the approximately 1,000 children and youth in their care will transition well from residential care to other settings, will be fully included in society, and will live lives that they have reason to value. Key to this objective is the empowerment of the children and youth to take their development into their own hands, to develop ideas of a possible future, and to pursue these ideas actively and sustainably. In the project “Creating Futures”, these homes plan to collect knowledge from children, youth, staff, and managers, as well as from the literature; to develop a framework of analysis to identify current good practices, and potentials for further development; and to implement a concrete pilot project in each home. Evaluations of the learning and development process and dissemination of publications complete the project. Throughout, there will be a strong focus on the voice of children and youth. Collaborating as a community of practice and within the context of expert network FICE International, the homes will make use of their diversity for stimulating learning and development on the individual, professional, and organisational levels. This paper describes the emergence and design of the planned project.
In the project “Creating Futures”, youths, staff, and leaders from youth homes in Switzerland and Hungary collaborate in a Community of Practice. Their goal is to develop organisational innovations that allow each of the youth homes to more effectively promote the self-empowerment of young people: their ability to take charge of their own lives and realise their own ideas of the future. This paper reports results, learnings, and first impacts regarding both the topic and the collaborative process in the project’s first formalised year, 2019. In developing its ways of working, the Community of Practice aims to engage as many persons as possible in each youth home. Through focus group discussions, a literature review, and a Young Expert Exchange, organisational factors that promote self-empowerment in residential care have been identified. Representatives of each youth home have selected those of most interest and have begun to assess their existing good practice as well as needs and potentials for innovation. The article includes the voices of participants as it reflects on the requirements for, and benefits and challenges of, youth participation and collaboration within a highly diverse Community of Practice.
Daily life in a child and youth home is created jointly by staff, children, youth and leaders. However, three important resources often remain unavailable for the development of the organisation and its promotion of the young people: (1) the knowledge of the organisation, and different perspectives on the organisation, that these persons hold, (2) the energies freed when they perceive the quality of the child and youth home as a matter of shared interest and join forces to develop it, and (3) the organisation and the processes of shaping it as learning opportunities in themselves, especially for children and youth. By participating in shaping the organisation that they live in, they not only make a contribution to its quality that only they can make, but also strengthen important competences for their independent lives. Examples from practice and research in Brazil, Hungary and Switzerland illustrate the three resources and how they can benefit both the organisation and all the persons in it, especially the children and youth. Readers are encouraged to harness the ‘hidden treasure’ that these resources represent, for the benefit of the child and youth homes as well as the children and youth in their care.
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