When children and teens have the influence of a caring adult, they are more likely to avoid risky behaviors and they can establish a stable emotional relationship. The project provides familiar and communitarian conviviality for sheltered children and adolescents who have fragile or broken family bonds, who have remote chances of adoption or family reintegration. Institutionalization can have negative results on the psychosocial development when the child or teen doesn't count on an adult.
There are 47.000 children and adolescents from the ages of 7 to 17 waiting to be adopted in Brazil. The majority don't have the chance of getting adopted because they don't fulfill the most desired profile: girls, white, no siblings, with up to two years of old and without any disease. Many end fInstitutionalization is their fate, but that can have negative results on the psychosocial development, specially when the child/teen doesn't count on an adult which he can establish a stable emotion
The project aims to enable and encourage the formation and maintenance of individualized and long-lasting emotional bonds between children/teens and volunteers, what we call a caring adult. The project is a way of involving the community in the good care of sheltered children, offering them a chance to experience family and social life. The final aim is to offer these children emotional support on a long-time basic, which will help them to build an autonomous life.
The project provides secure and lasting relationships for children and teens living in shelters, strengthening their psychosocial development, and to enlighten community members to get involved with sheltered children and teens, contributing to the construction of their life projects. This is a lifetime relationship, with long-term benefit for the 20 children and teens who will participate. When children and teens have the influence of a caring adult, they are more likely to avoid risky behavior
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
