Our model project Providing care for families with special needs children and youths

Creating a better quality of life for children and youths with life-limiting illness, as well as for their families, is one of the top goals of the Björn Schulz Foundation. We provide support to such families to the best of our abilities, whether that be with a stay at the Sonnenhof children's hospice, by pairing them with one of our volunteer family helpers, or setting them up to receive care from our Kinder PaCT team in cases of a health crisis. We've noticed time and again that providing comprehensive, everyday accompaniment, the kind that offers families security and reliability, can only be overcome by jumping several hurdles and that our abilities to provide support are limited. This is precisely why our new project "Providing care for families with special needs children and youths" (known by its abbreviation, VK KiJu) was created.

You can find more information with our project partner.

Coordinating care for families with special needs children and youth in need of care is a model project of the Berlin Senate office for health, care and equality, supported by the city-state's Health and Social Affairs Agency. Teams from the VK KiJu have been providing support to affected families since March 2018. The care is given on a temporary basis, since it is in addition to, and not as far-ranging, as the assistance programs offered by youth services and primary care providers.

We provide assistance to families with children, youths and young adults up to age 27 who need care, live at home, and are faced with:

✓ upcoming or threatened care needs that will require coordination of a complex series of assistance duties;

✓ the need for multiple forms of professional assistance;

✓ pending extreme stress situations and crises that could affect the health, care and therapeutic assistance the child needs.

What do we do?

• We help create an individualized network
• Provide stability to the existing network, plus counseling and continued coordination of sociall guaranteed petitions
• Create ties to needed assistance networks
• Help create connections to groups that can help provide support

The VK KiJu team comes to your home to get to know you and your family

We take time to get to know your needs and learn how to help you find the necessary care.

We do this by working closely with the integration assistance offered by youth services and the primary care provider.

By working with you, we have the opportunity to track down gaps in the system, scientifically diagnose them and find a way to make them visible at the political level.

By coordinating the different kinds of aid, families get time to spend with their sick children and their healthy siblings and even get some time for themselves, a luxury that is taken for granted by families with healthy children.

This way the Björn Schulz Foundation contributes to ensuring and further developing the provision of assistance and health care so that the child can be involved in everyday life and the family can take a step towards an improved quality of life.

Talk to your personal physician, your contacts in the rehabilitation facility or your primary caregiver about the services we offer and ask them to contact us. A trained professional will help you through the screening application and get you into contact with the VK KiJu office. Contact us directly any time if you have any questions!

Those of us working at the Björn Schulz Foundation have the opportunity to take part in this project in 2018 and 2019. Working closely with the Senate administration for health, care and equality and boosted with assistance from the state health and social affairs agency, we are working with two other social medicine groups to help families get into the system and through any potential snarls. The care providers can be approached by families, pediatricians, attending clinics and other offices that are in contact with the affected families. They get to know the families, get a feel for the individual needs based on individual conversations and direct them to the kind of help they need, just the way a case management system would. At the same time, the programs offered by the care coordinator come second to the integration programs of youth services and the other care providers. The care coordinator has to stay in contact with these groups and work closely with them. As soon as the family starts to receive care from youth services or a care provider, then the care coordiantor takes a step back. This targeted approach means the families get help getting through the hurdles of applications and the lost lists of their various contacts, while also giving the program chances to highlight problems in the system.

There are families that are always in contact with us "now and again" and tell us about their lives and their needs and worries, but who still manage to fall through the cracks. Thanks to the coordination of the different services, families win back time for their children, healthy siblings and also for themselves, something that families with healthy children can take for granted. This way the Björn Schulz Foundation contributes to ensuring and further developing the provision of assistance and health care so that the child can be involved in everyday life and the family can take a step towards an improved quality of life.