Tartu Child Support Center

Über uns

Tartu Child Support Center was established as NGO in 1995. It is the first of its kind in Estonia, where a multidisciplinary team is involved in work with abused or/and neglected children and their family members. Child Support Center aims to prevent child abuse and domestic violence in Estonia, by raising awareness of community, providing professionals with training, and by counseling and treating abused children and their family members.

The essential functions of the Child Support Center are the following:
• providing psychological, social and medical counselling, psychotherapy and acute aid in emergency cases to the children and their family members that are exposed to/suffer from violence;
• training of specialists that are engaged in work with children (medical practitioners, social workers, pedagogues, psychologists, juvenile police officers, prosecutors, judges etc.);
• establishing network of specialists in Tartu and spreading the particular model throughout Estonia;
• shaping public opinion towards domestic violence and child abuse issues in our society.

The work of Tartu Child Support Center is based on teamwork. All team members are qualified, provided with special training to deal with abused children and their family members.

Services
• acute aid
• counselling
• psychotherapy (individual, group and family therapy, music and game therapy, solution-focused brief therapy, cognitive-behavioural therapy)psychosocial and medical rehabilitation
• support person service
All consultations and therapy sessions are confidential and free of charge.

Additional services:
• supervision of specialists that are involved in work with children, team work
• regular participation in minors’ commission
• assessment of child’s mental health condition for court, and for child protection specialist
• involvement in child interviews during the hearings and as a specialist in court session
• summoning “the city team” and supervising in handling complicated cases

Projects:
• Stop Sex Trafficking of Children & Young People Campaign
• Offenders Beware! Raising Awareness, Capacity and Motivation for the Protection of Children from Commercial Sexual Exploitation in Tourism'
• Project “Big Brother, Big Sister”: to establish friendship between two individuals – a child and a grown-up volunteer.
• Project “For Better Future”: prevention of abuse by raising parenting skills.
• Foreign project “Child Abuse and Treatment” (Belarus): Training program for the child specialists of St. Petersburg and Pskov

Lemme Haldre is the head of the center.

For other net participants we can offer an expert guidance through trained staff, give an expert opinion, procure expert information and establish new contacts in the field of our work.