Lithuania

"Vaikystes pradzia-namai" Lietuva - Home-Start Lithuania
Regina Sevelkaitiene
Tel: 00 370 46 300385
email: gausiu.seimu@centras.lt

The public company “Nuo pradžios” – is an organization based on the model of the international organization, Home-Start. It is an innovative social service for families in Lithuania, based on the following fundamentals: it is an organization where volunteers with parenting experience provide regular qualified emotional and practical (but not financial) assistance for families with pre-school children at their homes, helping to avoid family crises and breakdown. Activities of the organization are based on the principle that parents play the main role in developing a safe and happy environment for their children.

How and who can Home-Start help?

Many mothers and fathers when raising children face various difficulties that later can lead to their family breakdown. Home-Start volunteers, who have parenting experience and completed preparatory courses, offer support, friendship, practical (not financial) assistance by dedicating their time and visiting families at their homes.
Home-Start help parents who are raising twins, experience health problems or are unemployed; single mothers or those who experience postnatal depression; families with many children or those that do not have friends and relatives, etc.
Home-Start approach

‘HS seeks to provide support to families to prevent the difficulties turning into a crisis and the crisis ending up in the family‘s breakdown. ’ Guidebook for Home-Start policies and practical activities
Visiting at home is the main feature of Home-Start, based on realistic, flexible feedback and caring attitude. In their activities volunteers refer to the strongest family’s sides, while spending time together and offering their friendship. They give the family a chance to shape new relationship, establish new ideas and develop skills.
Personal relationships established with volunteers strengthen family powers. The support is provided as long as necessary; the family can accept these relations or decline them any time.
Although Home-Start is not an intervention service to overcome a crisis; the volunteer to have established relationship with the family may react to the crisis accordingly.
Home-Start offers its services irrespectively of one’s religion, disability, sex, sexual orientation or ethnic origin.

Confidentiality

Home-Start seeks to guarantee that any family would receive all the necessary help from the visiting healthcare specialist, social worker or other specialist without compromising confidentiality.
All the information about the parents and family is handled as confidential and only if required is discussed with the coordinator in order to advise the volunteer or to help the family. Any disclosure of this confidential information to another person can occur only with the parents’ approval and in order to help the family, with the exception of the cases when protecting the child the information may be disclosed to the appropriate institution.

Who is a Home-Start volunteer?

The volunteer is like a friend, who by listening and spending time with the family and having his own parenting experience, can come up with various solutions to the problems.
Home-Start volunteers who enter the family accept the differences of all the family members and their dignity, respect the family‘s cultural, moral and religious values. Depending on the family needs and by mutual agreement the volunteer can visit the family one or several times per week, offer his experience in raising children by accomplishing some practical tasks, providing an opportunity for the parents to take a break from their duties.
Home-Start programs are aimed to increase the family‘s confidence in their powers and independence with the help of the following means:

offering support

Web site designed by Flare Imaging Ltd