Pro Juventute launches guide for parents with a migration background
On February 23, Pro Juventute launches the parent guide "Pro Juventute Unser Kind" for foreign-language parents. The guide is intended to address the specific needs of parents with a migration background - in their mother tongue and one of the national languages.
Every year, around 20,000 children of foreign parents and many children of parents with a migration background are born in Switzerland. Some of these parents are inadequately informed about prevention, counseling and early intervention services for their children due to insufficient language skills. Pro Juventute writes this in a press release. For this reason, the parents' guide "Pro Juventute Unser Kind" (Pro Juventute Our Child) for foreign-language parents will be launched on February 23, 2011.
Stephan Oetiker, Director of Pro Juventute, says that sustainable integration succeeds when it involves the whole family in a targeted way from the first years of life. By launching the guidebook, Pro Juventute is making "an active contribution to the integration of migrants". The parents' guide is aimed at foreign-language mothers and fathers of children aged 0 to 6 years. Parents with a migrant background receive practical information on topics such as care, nutrition, health and development as well as tips on education and upbringing for each year of their child's life. The guide is published in seven foreign languages: Albanian, Turkish, Tamil, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Portuguese, Spanish and English. The text of the brochure is easy to read and bilingual: German & foreign language or French & foreign language. Illustrations and cartoons facilitate comprehensibility and language skills as well as communication in counseling situations.
The guide is intended as a supplement to the letters to parents. These have been offering young parents support with the development, upbringing and living together with their child for 40 years. The aim is for the municipalities to integrate "Pro Juventute Our Child" into the existing parent letter distribution network and thus make an active contribution to integration and health promotion, says Pro Juventute Director Stephan Oetiker.
In the launch year 2011, Pro Juventute is making the guide available free of charge to local authorities and specialist agencies in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland.
