How the Here and Now Charitable Foundation Supports Foster Families in the Capital

We help those who need it

The Resource Center for Assistance to Foster Families of the Here and Now Foundation was established in 2009, and at the end of 2020 it became known as the Help Center. 12 employees work here, the team includes psychologists for adults, adolescents, children, a curative teacher, a social pedagogue and a neuropsychologist. Specialists collectively develop a route of assistance, discuss it with parents and adjust it in accordance with the expectations of the family.

Foster families receiving assistance from the Here and Now Charity Fund are a special category of families that are most often in a crisis situation: families in which it is not possible to establish interaction between parents and children for a long time, and families with foster children who have limited health opportunities , a history of failure in school and society. Parents in such families are in emotional exhaustion, often they have no one to discuss the situation with. At the same time, the parent is the one who spends a lot of time with the child and directly affects the well-being of the child within the family.

The purpose of the Help Center is to help parents understand the characteristics of their child, overcome crises and enjoy communication. The work is aimed at improving psychological literacy and stabilizing the emotional state of parents and children. In 2020, the Here and Now Foundation received a grant " Moscow is a Good City " for the implementation of a project to develop the autonomy of the foster family and increase parental competence. It was the specialists of the Helping Center who, within the framework of the project, provided psychological assistance to foster and foster families in various formats: group classes for parents, family classes and trainings where children come with their parents, as well as individual work with both parents and children.

The tasks of the Help Center are consonant with the tasks of escort services in urban centers for orphans, so they work in tandem in many programs. “A family that has adopted a child for upbringing can at any moment find itself in a difficult life situation when there is not enough theoretical knowledge,” says Elena Korsakova , head of the support service for consanguineous and foster families of the Tsentralny Central Center for Families . -  And then the support of both state and non-profit organizations working in this area is very important. If necessary, the specialists of the Assistance Center meet with the family, carry out diagnostics, and develop an individual route of assistance.”

Charitable Foundation "Here and Now" holds regular internships, conferences and webinars for family care professionals from different regions of Russia and shares experience and knowledge in the field of family care, as well as ways to overcome early childhood psychological trauma.

“Specialists of the escort service of centers for orphans in 2017 also underwent such an internship and were able to get acquainted with the experience of colleagues from other regions ,” says Elena Korsakova. In addition, within the framework of a regularly functioning supervisory group for psychologists of family placement, the specialists of the "Central" together with the Assistance Center work with difficult cases to accompany foster families.

This year, specialists from Central and families who are accompanied here became participants in webinars on various aspects of foster parenting, and specialists from the accompaniment service and the School of foster parents of the center joined the online meeting “How a specialist can save himself when faced with violence in history with a client." The meeting was organized by the Helping Center and Marina Erlikh, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist at the Sisters Center for Helping Sexual Violence Survivors.

“One of the main tasks of the Foster Families Club of the Center for Assistance to Family Education “Central” is to support already formed guardian families and families of adoptive parents,” adds Elena Korsakova. -  It is aimed at preventing emotional burnout of foster parents and crisis situations in the family. And in this direction, we are also actively cooperating with the Here and Now Charitable Foundation. For example, the foundation, together with the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory, has been providing our foster families with the opportunity to attend concerts with their children for several years, and the response to such initiatives from foster parents is always very good .”