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Raising children — we're in this together!
Our vision & mission
Children should be able to grow up safely, warmly and healthily within their own family.
To make this possible, Warm Omringd helps families build a network of supportive people around them, so that parents can be relieved from time to time and children can receive the extra love and attention they sometimes need.
We're starting in Ghent...
How do we make this happen?
Families who feel they could use some extra support can register with us. This support can take many different forms.
We call these families requesting families.
Families who would like to offer support are called supporting families.
To protect the privacy of our families, only stock photos are used for illustration purposes.
Warm Omringd brings these families into contact with one another – we call this a match.
We approach this with great care to make sure the chance of success is as high as possible. After a family signs up, we visit both the requesting and supporting families to understand exactly what they are looking for.
This can be anything: from a place where the children can play once a week, or where a teenager can study in peace during exams, to someone who can take the children to sports practice or art classes. A family might even be looking for someone like a grandmother or grandfather figure.
We take a very broad view when it comes to what support can look like.
The supporting family may also have specific preferences.
For example, they might prefer to support a child who is around the same age as their own child(ren), or they may want to help a child learn Dutch by reading to them regularly.
"It takes a village to raise a child." ~ African proverb
Because the safety of the child is our highest priority, we ask every person aged 18 or older who is involved in the process to provide a certificate of good conduct every year.
After the first meeting, the requesting and supporting families decide together what the support will look like in practice. Then, a trial period of two months begins.
If this goes well, both families will meet every six months with their contact person from Warm Omringd to evaluate whether they are still satisfied with how things are going and whether they want to continue.
Of course, the contact person from Warm Omringd is also available in the meantime for any questions, concerns or thoughts.
Warm Omringd is a project of Gentse Spruiten vzw and VCOK.
Warm Omringd has been inspired by and is supported by the organization Buurtgezinnen.nl, which has been active for 10 years and operates in more than 125 municipalities in the Netherlands.
