SUPERVISED CONTACT: Support and sustainable development in vulnerable childrens everyday life (SOUL)

This project focuses on an important dimension in the life of children placed in out-of-home care: their contact and relationship to their biological parents. This contact involves many actors, conflicting emotions, interests and considerations and adjacent challenges, which can hinder that the voice of the child is heard and given importance. The project develops af new practice theory and a research-based method where the child’s needs, interests and everyday life are included and become decisive for what is considered a safe and developing contact. The method strengthens sustainable collaboration, prevent conflicts, and supports the child in developing a narrative about the relation to parents and network, which improves the contact and gives the child the opportunity to develop a life history that makes sense in the long term. A sustainable democracy is dependent on people’s experience of being valuable and capable of affecting their own life conditions.

The project is conducted in a partnership between Århus Municipality Family Center, Vejle Municipality Family and Disability Department, Ikast-Brande Municipality Family counselling, Foundation VITA Social Work Center, Children and Youth Center Vejle/YMCA social work; Children center Team Contact Århus Municipality and Department of Sociology and Social Work, Aalborg University.