Family-Based Care Centre

The family-based care Centre at Martha and Mary Convent of Mercy, founded in May, 2011, aims at helping children without parents find a new family. There’re, basically, two ways of doing so: if the child’s parents require help in overcoming a crisis, the Centre does its best to assist them socially, psychologically, and spiritually; if, however, it proves impossible to return to the old home, the child may be found foster parents. In order to successfully do that, there’s a “School for Foster Parents’ at the Family-based Care Centre.

Three social workers, two psychologists and a lawyer conduct rehabilitation work with biological parents of ‘Miloserdie’s orphanage charges, and also social and psychological-pedagogical support for Orthodox foster families.

The Centre is also responsible for searching and training foster parents for orphanage children. Potential families undergo detailed training at the Orthodox School for Foster Parents.

Helping foster families, their psychological support and counselling in the field of upbringing is the third direction of targeted help in the Centre.

Since 2011, 69 orphans and those left without parental care have found new loving homes with graduates of the School for Foster Parents; 123 families have got psychological, legal and social-pedagogical help.