heks

The La Noce welfare centre was opened at the end of the nineteen-fifties by the Waldensian Church in La Noce, a poor district on the outskirts of Palermo. The main aim at that time was to arrange school places for children from poor families because, despite school attendance being obligatory, there were not enough state schools in Palermo and the cost of private education was prohibitive for poor families.

Today the centre has branched out and offers a range of welfare support services. La Noce supports children with learning difficulties so that they need not be admitted to a home. At the same time the whole family is gradually brought into the education and learning process. HEKS was one of the founders of the welfare centre and has been supporting it financially ever since. HEKS also arranges voluntary placements for helpers from other partner countries.

Aims:

One of the main aims of the work of La Noce is to support the families and avoid the need for the children to be placed in foster care or children’s homes. In order to achieve this aim, the support does not end with the families but extends to the whole network of welfare services surrounding the families.

Initiatives:

Tutors mentor the children for six to 12 months. In concrete terms this means that they spend three two-hour sessions a week with each boy or girl. During their time together they play games, do schoolwork or go for walks.

There were many problems at first with the tutoring work. Even today, putting the children in a home can still be seen as the only solution - and also means the end of hope. Thankfully these problems are consigned to the past in La Noce and soon will be in other towns as well - today there are already twenty tutors committed to supporting children and their families.

The success of the tutoring work made other towns sit up and listen, and centre staff are now receiving requests from many quarters asking for advice on setting up similar services. The tutors at La Noce have been asked to set up a mentoring service in Palermo itself with the brief of supporting children and families in the whole town.
The kindergarten and the primary school for disadvantaged and disabled children are just as important, however, as are other centres working with the disabled, self-help groups for boys with behavioural problems, and the family counselling centre.