Submitted by crinadmin on
More than a year ago, the Department of Social Work of the Landshut University of Applied Sciences launched the German project "Participation - quality standards for children and youth in residential care" under the direction of Prof. Dr. Mechthild Wolff. The project is financed by SOS-Kinderdorf e.V. Germany and receives professional support from the German branch of the Fédération Internationale des Communautés Educatives (FICE). In the frame of this project, a literature investigation was carried out to analyse the various participation discourses of the German education system with regard to its blind spots. The results showed that participation is generally given high attention and that many adults accept it as a guiding idea. When it comes to implementing the concept in everyday life with the children and youth, the need for development is, however, still considerable. The investigation furthermore revealed that not many empirical conclusions regarding the implementation of participation in residential education and only few best practice examples of successful participation in residential care are available and that the points of view of the youth and their definitions of successful participation have been considered insufficiently or not at all. This was the point of departure of the project which asked youth to explain their concrete ideas, expectations and experiences with regard to participation in everyday life in their homes. To this end, a workshop with 15 youth and their carers from a total of six homes with experience in participation was organised. The discussion and evaluation stages of the workshop clearly revealed that the ideas of youth strongly relate to their everyday experiences and feelings. For them, participation is a question of the attitudes and personality of professionals. Attitudes that promote participation are a prerequisite for the participation climate the youth demand. Structural participation (among others, home councils, youth panels and boards) can only provide a necessary framework but this framework furthermore has to be brought into life by the people that live in it together. In conclusion, it can be said that, in order to implement participation in everyday life in the homes, an attitude that is oriented towards participation, an organisational culture that promotes participation and a corresponding human resources and organisational development have to supplement each other while everyone involved participates and assumes responsibility. This is the only way to establish and maintain a climate that promotes participation as imagined by the children and youth. From the German perspective, these results can be integrated into recommendations for the standard development within the context of the Q4C project, and the German project will therefore present its ideas at the work meetings of the national coordinators from 32 European countries.