ENSA Meeting, Vienna (Austria) 5th-6th may 2008

Vienna Youth and Family Department, Rüdengasse 11, 1030 Vienna

ENSA CHILD MEETING

In the

CITY OF VIENNA

6/5/2008

Participants present:

Anna-Stina Liljegren and Ulrika Wennerholm (Västerås), Salvatore Me and Giorgio de Gobbi (Veneto), Silvia Dalla Rosa and Giuseppe Gobbo (CNCA), Gustav Cruce and Lars Kristiansson (Härryda), Stefanie Friedlmayer, Ingrid Moser, Elisabeth Brousek, Monica Almqvist and Norbert Ceipek (Vienna), Sven-Erik Pistol and Eva Thorsen (Uppsala).

Study Visit[1]

Before the formal meeting (and parallel to the project planning)an interesting study visit was held at ”Lea”, a shelter for young women with drug problems.

Special presentation[2]

Mr Norbert Ceipek, Head of the Vienna KIG Platform gave an interesting presentation on a cooperation project between Vienna and Romaina and Bulgaria in the traffiking business in which hundreds of young Romanian boys and Bulgarian girls are victims. The majority of them are from the roma population in Romania/Bulgaria and are facing slave-like living conditions and the KIG Platform does an important and devoted work to support these children and help them to a better life back in their home countries.

The target of this cooperation is to establish structures in the home contries to guaranty that the local care system tries to make parents feeling reponsible fortheir children and not selling them out to traffikers. This is the basis on which children are brought back to their home countries.

Formal meeting

  • Introduction

-Eva welcomed everybody to the meeting.

  • Information from partners about Good Practice

-Ulrika informed that at the moment Västerås has a specific focus on collecting current research and new methods developed in Foster Care. They plan to organise collected results in a report that will come out later this autumn.

Decision: Ongoing information about this repot at the next ENSA Child meeting.

-Salvatore and Giorgio informed that there is a lot of work going on in the same field at the Veneto Observatory on Child Care. Among other things they are looking at a young person´s different periods of care, eg after 3-5-10 years, in foster care or/and residential care.

Decision: To invite the Veneto Observatoryto the next ENSA Child meeting to give a presentation on research, evaluation and other work undertaken there.

  • Ideas of cooperation

-Stefaniesuggested the ENSA web page to have a space for

a short summery of reserach papers on Child Care Research. In that way all ENSA members could have access to important information on research going on in different countries which would be an important contribution to raise the knowledge in a variety of fields.

-Sven- Erik will collect extensive research from the university of Lund in long term placement of children and young people. Decision: Uppsala will make a short summery of this at the next ENSA meeting

-Vienna is does a study with former children in residential care (1992), placed in various kinds of institutional care. These persons have been 25-30 years old (their experiences belonged to the late 70ties or early 80ties), when they have been inquired. It is planned

to replicate parts of this study with people places in residential in the late 90ies.

Decision:

1)Contribute to the website about information mentioned above

2)Contribution of information to the website about the Vienna Daphne project idea that we are working on right now.

3) Send the presentations from yesterday´s sessions for the ENSA website and please to Stefanie too.

1), 2) and 3) can be sent to Eva for further information and to Elena Curtopassi, who is collecting all papers for the web master for the ENSA website

  • Any other business

-Salvatore and Giorgio brought up an idea about a glossery and terminology template with important child prevention words that we often use in the network. This template includes an ordinary glossery of commonly used words in English, Italian, German and Swedish, as well asa short explanation of how the different countries define these concepts.

Decision: Salvatore and Giorgio will present the Veneto region strategy on a data base for a possible form to carry this out.

They will also send out a first suggestion of a template in cooperation with some ideas from Stefanie.

  • Next meeting

The Next ENSA Child meeting will be October 16 -17.

Place for the meeting will be informed about later.

  • End of meeting

Eva thanked the Viennese team for two interesting days and everybody for good cooperation.

Notes taken by Eva

KIG 1 (crisis intensive group) “LEA”

6th may 2008, 10:00-12:00

MA11 - Vienna Youth and Family Department

KIG 1 - "Lea" / 1030, Rochusgasse 8

Gudrun Wildling – Social Pedagogue ,supervisor in KIG 1 “LEA”

Who we are:

  • a housing facility of the Vienna Youth and Family Department for girls at the age of 15 to 18 years
  • we have room for 12 girls
  • girls are admitted by a team of social pedagogues and social workers
  • 8 social pedagogues supervise and support the girls with an accepting attitude for their particular life situations

Hours of opening for the girls:

  • on weekdays: 7 pm - 9 am
  • on Saturday, Sunday, holiday - open all day

Target group:

  • girls under the responsibility of youth welfare, aging from 15 to 18 (full age)
  • girls unable or unwilling to use other youth welfare offers (failure of previous support), but being in need of basic care due to being underage
  • consumers of legal and illegal drugs without motivation for change
  • drug addicted girls declining any help (for the time being)
  • girls tending to violence, delinquency, destruction and constraining others in their positive development

What does "LEA" mean?

LEA is the female equivalent to LEO. In Austrian- language LEO is a synonym for a temporary rest area, a protective zone in the children's game of playing tag (the kid who is "im LEO" must not be chased and caught). LEA can be interpreted as a place safe from the outside world for girls living under tough circumstances including violence and drug abuse.

Services:

  • meeting basic needs: housing, sleeping accommodation, food, shower, laundry, organisation of everyday life
  • protection and rest area ("Leo" - "Lea")
  • violence- and drug-free zone
  • support in learning problem solving strategies as alternatives to violence
  • support in self-organisation
  • room and time for reflection
  • counselling on demand
  • security in a reliable environment with clear and easy rules
  • confrontation with reality principle (self-responsibility)

What we are not:

  • therapeutic institution
  • medical-psychiatric institution
  • we do not offer a service for daytime activities

Our basic rules:

  • no physical violence
  • no possession, consuming, distribution of drugs, alcohol and no weapons inside the institution
  • no pets

Anita Walter, psychologist at “basic research”, execution of evaluation in KIG 1 “LEA”

Objectives of evaluation

  • One of our aims was to investigate if LEA as special institution for these girls can offer help, where other measures or services failed. We were interested in the girls' mood, their health and risk-taking behaviour, aggression level and perspectives and if there is a change over time.
  • Another aim was to find out if the girls at LEA have a different background - especially we were interested in their past experiences with other institutions.

Methods

This study sets out to analyse the situation of the girls from LEA in comparison to other girls in residential care. Therefore we have provided a control group from two other community housing facilities.

Social pedagogues had to fill in questionnaires with the girls’ basic data and monthly recordings concerning their mood and behaviour, because we could not expect the girls answer to detailed questionnaires.

Sample

Data were gathered from 18 girls of the KIG 1 (10 completed cases and 8 current cases), our control group is composed of girls from 2 houses – in sum we have 14 girls with 9 completed and 5 current cases.

Basic data

  • All girls were at the age of 16 to 18 years, therefore they are well comparable concerning their age.
  • Furthermore we were interested in the question for how many years the girls have been in residential care, and we can see that the girls from KIG1 are in residential care for 4,83 years on average with a range from zero to 15 years. In "Haus Pötzleinsdorf" (control group) we have a similar situation, while in "Haus Aichhorngasse" (control group) the girls are in residential care no more than one year on average.
  • Focussing on crisis placements in the past – a conspicuous result is that the KIG1 girls have 2,8 crisis placements on average with a range from 1 up to 7 times, whereas the girls from the control group have fewer crisis placements.
  • Approximately the same result we can find regarding placements in other institutions: the girls from KIG1 show up to 11 inhabitations in different institutions with 3,8 institutions on average.

The findings reinforce that the girls in KIG1 have a different background and were passing through more care facilities than others.

Objectives

The main objective in KIG1 LEA is basic care, but in some cases more sophisticated objectives can be aspired, such as graduation, independence, drug withdrawal. In 7 of 10 completed cases the objectives could be achieved and in 3 cases partly, while in no case the defined targets could not be reached at all.

Monthly recordings

  • To show group results I have aggregated the monthly recordings into 3 points of time: at the beginning of evaluation or time of admission, during the stay, and at the end of evaluation or time of discharge.
  • The mood level in LEA is slightly above the mood level of the control group.
  • The girls from the control group are on a higher level of aggressive behaviour in comparison to the LEA girls – and there is no change over time from the beginning to the end of recordings - in both groups.

Next we regard single items of risk-taking behaviour: "lying & stealing" on the one hand and "violation of the rules" on the other. In both items the control group scores higher, the frequency of risk-taking behaviour is higher in the control group. In sum there is a slight decrease of both "lying & stealing" and "violation of the rules" over time.

The results have been discussed within the team of social pedagogues and subsequently with their superior authority in order to explain the findings. The team was of the opinion, that the LEA girls are not a priori less aggressive than the others from the control group, but within LEA there are fewer rules to observe (and to violate, respectively) in comparison to the other houses.

Why do girls from LEA score lower on lying and stealing or breaking the rules? Again, there are fewer rules of the house, making it easier for the girls to come to terms with the structure, and crucially the social pedagogues avoid a moralizing “finger wagging”.

So we can conclude that the findings reinforce an efficient realisation of the KIG1 setting due to very basic but clear structures: no violence - no drugs, otherwise exclusion from the house. And this methodological approach enables the girls to compliance with the regulations.

  • Regarding the next findings in matters of health we have the single items “sadness and depression” on the one hand and “regular sleep” on the other. Regarding the LEA girls we can see an increase of sadness & depression from the beginning up to the end. In contrast the control group demonstrates a decrease in sadness & depression. This interaction between time and group is statistically significant. Another item representing health behaviour is regular sleep. There is increasing score of regular sleep in both groups – especially the girls from LEA did not have a regular sleep pattern at the beginning – and this has remarkably changed.
  • From the beginning the LEA girls score higher on self-esteem than the girls from the control group – whereas at the end the values of self-esteem in both groups converge.
  • Next we regard the single item “the ability to self-organisation” concerning perspectives. The girls from KIG1 are expected to organise their day by themselves - this is meant by self-organisation. The girls from LEA have a higher level of ability to self-organisation in comparison to the control group – but both groups exhibit a contrary development: while the control group shows an increase over time, the ability to self-organisation of the LEA girls is declining slightly.

The team discussed the results and found some interesting conclusions: First we have a positive result regarding the enhancement of a regular sleep pattern: as a result of the structure the girls develop a regular sleep-wake-cycle.

The LEA girls’ self-esteem is rated higher than in the control group – an explanation for this finding is that to some extent self-esteem is a precondition to admission to KIG1 where the girls have to come to terms with the structure. The same explanation is valid for the higher scored ability to self-organisation: only if the girls can be expected to cope with self-organised day structure, they are referred to this institution.

But why does the ability to self-organisation decrease over time?

The social pedagogues have discussed this result intensely – they arrived at the conclusion that the oncoming age of majority (being of full age when 18 years old) and the associated discharge cause increasing demands from outside.

This is a confrontation with reality for the girls resulting in sadness & depression, the girls feel overburdened and unable to meet the challenges, implicating a decrease in the ability to self-organisation due to growing demands from their surroundings.

The professionals have discussed how to solve this problem and they came to the conclusion that the missing follow-up support is a great problem. When the girls have reached full age, youth welfare is no longer responsible for them. So there should be a link to external units to provide the opportunity for an appropriate aftercare.

Conclusion

  • Girls who were considered non-compliant and "care-resistant" can be provided with basic care and support in KIG1 “Lea”.
  • So the obligations of the Youth and Family Department can be fulfilled.
  • The project (first limited to 2 years) has been prolonged

Thank you for visiting the KIG 1 “LEA”

Contact:

Gudrun Wildling – , phone +43 1 81 354 65 111

Anita Walter – , phone +43 1 4000 90692

Summary by Anita Walter

1

[1] A handout about this presentation (by Anita Walter) is attached by this minute.

[2] Stefanie will send some figures of this project a soon as possible.