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with Parents – for Parents
ANE organized an action conference for parents’guides projects
Author: Stefan Hellriegel, journalist, conference observer
Translator: Helmut Voigt, Gemeinde Dolmetschdienst
- Action conference about parents’ guides projects. In the foreground: integration commissioner Günter Piening (right) and the district mayor of Berlin-Mitte Christian Hanke (centre). Photo: M. Minehan
Successful education does not come up automatically – this is made evident by the large number of young people who leave our school system without final certificates year after year. Successful education requires to recognise and promote the potential of children and young people, to address difficulties and to find solutions. To this end, teachers in education institutions as well as parents have to see themselves as partners who jointly shape and accompany the educational careers of children and young people.
However, it is often difficult for parents, in particular for those having a migration background, to get involved as partners in their children’s kindergarten or school – there are too many obstacles on the way. The concept of " parents' guides" or "integration guides" has been developed in order to address parents who do not yet get involved as much as it were necessary and desirable. These guides are to motivate and promote other parents to play an active role with regard to their children's education. Very often, the parents' guides themselves are committed parents having a migration background who can approach and advise other parents more easily than the "official authorities". Parents seeking help can contact guides without hesitation or inhibition. These guides are ready to visit them at home or to accompany them to the kindergarten, school or administrative bodies where they render help as intercultural as well as language mediators.
- Presentation of the report and panel discussion about the preparatory round tables in the city districts . Photo: M.Minehan
Although this form of low-threshold work with parents has developed in a largely autonomous and uncontrolled manner in Berlin during the past decade, its contribution to the integration of people having a migration background is so significant that the services provided by guide projects within the framework of the thorough educational reforms in Berlin are to be extended and made sustainable so as to become organizationally and financially viable. In order to include this issue into the discussions about the educational reforms in State stonst:place on Berlin:placeState, Guenter Piening, the integration and migration commissioner of the Berlin Senate, has asked Arbeitskreis Neue Erziehung e. V. (ANE) to initiate a quality assurance process for parents' guides projects. To this end, ANE organized and moderated an action conference about "Quality Assurance for Guide Projects in Kindergartens and Schools". This conference was held in the PlaceName ston Berlinst PlaceName PlaceType on City Hall Place Type place on 2009-12-11. Representatives of promoters and projects working in State onst1 place Berlinplace Stateand responsible district politicians had been invited. The aim of the conference was to gain a survey of the various existing parents' guides projects and their working methods and to provide for an opportunity to exchange views in order to enable the persons and bodies concerned to participate in the envisaged quality assurance process and to establish a contextual framework for the recommendations regarding the sustainability of parents' guides projects. After the conference, ANE shall prepare these recommendations for the Senate and the <st1:State place on Berlinplace State districts. The conference had been preceded by preparatory round table talks which had been organised with the help of the district mayors of Mitte, Tempelhof-Schoeneberg, Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Neukoelln.
- Small-circle panel discussion. Photo: M. Minehan
About 80 participants used the plenary sessions as well as the subgroup discussions for a comprehensive exchange of their concepts, experience and improvement proposals. The main issues were the establishment of an occupational profile of parents' guides, measures of quality assurance and cooperation across projects as well as aspects of project coordination on the district or senate levels. The participants agreed upon the necessity of a better district and cross-district project communication, a longer-term project funding system and a standardised qualification of the project staff who are made available at present mostly via short-term labour market policies – a subject giving rise to strong and openly expressed frustration of project managers. The proposals presented by participants from the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district met with vivid interest and aimed at funding and coordinating guide projects as a family-promoting measure in accordance with Article 16 of the children and youth protection act (KJHG) and at the establishment of opportunities for parents' guides to laterally enter the first job market, e.g. as educators for which there will be an increasing need in the next few years. Some issues regarding the professionalisation of the work of parents' guides, such as the role of voluntary cooperation, or the cross-district administration of guide projects were discussed in a more controversial way.
The detailed conference documents will be made available for download from www.a4k.de
