Day care center “Vaikai – vaikams”

Day care center Vaikai – vaikams provides social and educational services for 7–12-year-old kids and their families who experience various difficulties. The day care center uses occupational activities as a mean to reduce or to eliminate the reasons that cause child or family problems. Sessions are held Monday – Friday, 14:00 – 18:00.

The goal of the activities – to create a space where a child could feel safe, accepted, needed, to learn relations with others on the group and individual level, to strengthen his/her learning skills, experience childhood, friendship (play, create, vacate), to grow stronger as a person (values, responsibility, independence) and to get acknowledging to God.

Principles of the day care center activities:

• the activities are based on the Christian social teaching philosophy;
• help to a child or a family is given according to individual needs;
• upbringing of a child is the responsibility of a family, and external actions should be as little as possible;
• a child and his/her family should be involved in the organization and decision making, regarding the help provided to them.
• the final goal of the activities is to enable kids and their families to live independent and self-sustaining lives as much as possible.

In the day care center, a family can get support (social, psychological, material) in order to solve existing difficulties and can participate in a child’s life more actively, as well as to strengthen their interrelationship during consultations, joint events, camps.

Volunteers/interns get an opportunity to contribute to organizing the day care center occupation activities, to grow and to develop as universal personalities and to solidify their experience and knowledge via assumed responsibilities.

The services offered to children in the day care center are as follows:

• Help in studying/doing homework. The key principle is that the learning goals are to be chosen by involving both: the child and his/her family, or at least the goals should be discussed with the child. Therefore it is important to encourage kids to do their homework themselves, to develop their learning skills and to know that the day care center is not responsible for all of the homework – the final responsibility for supervising the homework belongs to parents or foster parents;

• Development sessions. The goal of the sessions organized in the day care center is to develop the desired social skills and to increase children’s capabilities. A game is not an end but a mean to improve children communication, conflicresolution and learning skills. We usually pay the highest attention to children self-expression through artistic activities, cuisine, board games, sports activities, team tasks, handicraft;

• Development of household and hygiene skills. Daily duties at the day care center help children to feel responsible for the day care center. This is also a way to develop children hygiene, self-care skills (wash hands, dishes, tidy the playground, tables etc.);

• Behaviour correction system. It is meant for developing appropriate behavior of children who have emotional or behavioural difficulties. It helps children to take responsibility for their behaviour, to change their attitude, to help others, to acquire necessary skills.

The care center’s Vaikai – vaikams team:

Lina Vaitkevičiūtė, Psychologist,

Tomas Stadalnykas, Youth Worker,

Youth and Children’s Coordinator

KRISTINA GELEŽEVIČIŪTĖ-VLASKOVA

How to contact us?

Phone: +370 608 05424

E-mail: vaikai.vaikams@matulaiciosc.lt