Safety, love, and warmth can be felt right at the entrance of the Home for Children Without Parental Care in Tuzla. This home currently provides care for over 80 children and is one of five homes of this type in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The increased number of requests for accommodation in the Home for Children without Parental Care in Tuzla is particularly visible since the coronavirus pandemic until today.
Amra Fajić has been working at the Home for Children Without Parental Care in Tuzla for 18 years. She says that there were many challenges, but that all of them can be overcome more easily when you can see a smile on the children’s faces. Although parental love is what most children lack, the workers in this home strive to provide them with a family life and make up for what they lack: “What is important is that these children somehow become stronger and learn how to cope with those difficulties in life. It is primarily our goal that the children who come here, especially with certain traumatic experiences, with changes, with separation from their parents – how to overcome it”.
This institution provides adequate care for more than 80 children without parental care, of which 30 children are in the baby department alone. Recently, this home has seen an increased number of requests for placement of children, but the relief in all of this is the possibility of children going to foster families, according to Amela Tupajić, head of the Home’s socio-pedagogical service.
“Here, just today we had a child, that is, a young person who left us, and it is a big emotional moment, especially for the children who grow up here, who have been here for a long time. It’s like they’re leaving their house,” says teacher Fajić
And when they turn 18, they cease to be users of the Home. There are numerous difficulties and life challenges in those moments for young people who leave the Home for children without parental care in Tuzla. That’s why the staff makes a protection plan even before the child turns 18, so that the person can continue his life path as well as possible.
“When a child leaves the public care system – to know where he is going, to feel that security, to have support, to not have those fears of what will happen after he leaves. We have really successful examples of children leaving the public care system in the sense that they got apartments due to the support of certain donors,” adds Tupajić.
This home strives to provide children with the best possible stay and all the necessary love and attention that they lacked in their biological families. Proof of this is the calls and visits full of love from those who left this home when they reached adulthood.
Photo: illustration
