Prevent mexican children from living in the street

The Family Care Program (PAF) started its Workshop on Parenting Skills on January 27^th of this year. The first session was given at the PAF installations; there was a presentation activity where both parents and their children worked on self- knowledge.

It will be over the course of 11 sessions, that 14 families will develop the necessary parenting skills to learn the correct interactions between parents and their children.  On the last Friday of the month, a total of 15 fathers and mothers along with 29 children and teenagers will attend the workshop to do different programmed activities.

The Parenting Skills Workshop is divided into four modules: Self-knowledge, Upbringing, Conflict Resolution and Final Thoughts. .

The main topics of each session will be: What type of a mother/father am I ?; What is behind an emotion and how do adults react to them?; Listening to one and another; Communication Skills and Parenting Styles of Education and finally Conflict Resolution.  

During the Parenting Skills Workshop, there will also be three recreational activities: The first is a getting to know each other between, fathers, mothers and children. The second one is to identify the manner in which parents and children communicate during an outing. Finally, and as a closing of the workshop, the parents will be in charge of planning an outing and during the planning parents must take into account the listening, communication and conflict resolution skills.

At the beginning and at the end of the workshop a "Positive parenting" ranking will be applied, this is an instrument which can evaluate the development of parental skills.

In 2012, Fundacion Pro Niños de la Calle started to carry out prevention work with families, during our work with children and adolescents we noticed that some of them did not live completely in the street, but they spent a lot of time there. In their surroundings, several factors put them at a latent risk of dropping out of school, initiation of substance use, involvement with criminal groups or living on the street.

Since then, we have worked with more than 50 families, 35 in the last year. Three of the this group completed their program cycle at Pro Niños, so on November 27 we celebrated their graduation acknowledging that they now have the skills and strengths to take care of their children and offer them safe environments in which they are heard, supported and protected.

In the celebration (which was also attended by other families we are currently working with), we played, ate, socialized and reflected on the achievements that each family has built based upon their effort, as well as the things in which they still need to work to attain a home where their children can feel safe and happy.

Throughout the process with the three graduating families, we shared many experiences such as the empowerment of mothers, who were able to accept and learn to handle various situations of violence that they had experienced in their life and that affected their own well-being and that of their children. Furthermore, the support of adolescents who made such important decisions as returning to school or entering a detoxification center for the treatment of addictions.

Now these families have become strong, they can move forward with their children, and they do not need the assistance of Pro Niños. They have been able to improve their living conditions, develop skills and create networks of support in their surroundings to face the difficulties of daily life and support their children in their development, without the street being an option of life for them.