Czech Republic

HoSt Home-Start Czech Republic
Alžběta Benčová
Holandska 22
101 00 Praha 10
Czech Republic

Tel: +420 272 656 031 +420 777 801 404

info@hostcz.org, bencova@hostcz.org

http://www.hostcz.org

The aim of HoSt is a child made happy by happy parents.

About the Scheme

HoSt is a non-governmental non-profit organisation specialising in providing support to parents caring for children under the age of six.

The support is provided through trained volunteers visiting families, with at least one child under the age of six, in the families natural surroundings. Volunteers in the service of HoSt are normally chosen only from people with parental experience. This means that the volunteers are themselves parents who have gone through the different stages of family development and have a good idea of the situations and problems which young, inexperienced parents are likely to encounter.

Thanks to this experience the parents/volunteers may understand and anticipate various difficult and potentially sociopathological situations that may occur during early development of a young family. The HoSt volunteers help the family overcome the adverse effects of such things as partnership break-up, loneliness, unemployment, serious and long-term health problems, and also to come to terms with past setbacks and lack of parenting and house keeping skills. Likewise, they help families to integrate into the local community, thus alleviating feelings of isolation and loneliness.

Before they begin all volunteers must go though a preparatory course in working with families and children to ensure they have the knowledge and skills necessary to deliver the best possible help.

Visits to households are made only at the invitation of parents, that means with the client's consent (a written assent in keeping with the Act No. 359/1999 Coll. on the social-legal protection of children).

Objectives

By means of its services HoSt aims to foster and reinforce the feeling of parental identity within families.

In order to assist the healthy progress of children in their initial stages of development, HoSt offers a friendly and helpful support for parents, on the basis of voluntary, friendly assistance provided by experienced parent/volunteers. Much care is taken by the HoSt coordinator in matching volunteers to families and their specific requirements and needs. This supoport increases their confidence in handling problems they may initially find difficult and helps them to gain the stability, competence and positive motivation needed for the creation of a stable and loving home environment in which their children can develop. This is believed to be of crucial importance in the formation of their personality and future interpersonal relations. The final objective is that the family will then be ab

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