The project partners in the ProGuard project have been working together to strengthen effective guardianship accross Europe since October 2017. One of the goals of the project was to develop a practical online toolkit for guardians. The partners are glad to announce that the ProGuard toolkit for guardians has now been published. You can find it by going to www.guardianstoolkit.eu
This article serves as an opportunity to thank all (former) unaccompanied children, guardians and other contributors to the toolkit, especially the participants of the ProGuard field consultation, who provided valuable input for the toolkit. Guardians deserve the support they need which is why the toolkit has been published in 8 languages. If you can contribute in any way to sharing this toolkit, please don’t hesitate to do so.
Structure of the toolkit
The toolkit directly addresses the guardian and is organised in 4 main themes. These are: “Your mission”, “You and working with others”, “Your well being”, “Your knowledge and skills”. Every theme has two layers.
As an example, by clicking “Your mission”, the guardian will encounter the first layer of that theme giving an overview of the corresponding subjects:
- Facilitating child participation
- Promoting the child’s safety and well-being
- Exercising legal representation
- Finding durable solutions
By clicking on these subjects, the guardian will encounter the last layer of the theme, providing (if available);
- information on the subjects;
- training and tools;
- good practices.
Train-the-Trainer programme
The project partners developed a Train-the-Trainer programme for which the toolkit has been the basis. The programme is available through the website.
The toolkit is based on
- the handbook ‘Guardianship for children deprived of parental care – A handbook to reinforce guardianship systems to cater for the specific needs of child victims of trafficking’, that was developed by the European Union Agency For Fundamental Rights in 2015;
- the ALFACA manual, developed by Nidos and partners from 2015 – 2017;
- other available materials on guardianship;
- the expertise and good practices of the project partners in ProGuard.
ProGuard project
The ProGuard project, is co-funded by the Rights, Equality and Citizenship Programme of the European Commission. You can find more information about the ProGuard project here.
The content of the toolkit represents the views of the authors only and is their sole responsibility. The European Commission does not accept any responsibility for use that may be made of the information it contains.