Volunteer families help unsupported families care for their children

The little girl arrives practically asleep and still in her pajamas. It's very early, her mother has to go to work, and Quima opens the door also in her pajamas. She lays her on the sofa; they will continue sleeping while her mother goes to work. She will return in a few hours, which her daughter will spend with Quima. She is not a relative, nor a family friend, much less a babysitter. Quima is a volunteer in the Servei de Famílies Col·laboradores (SFC) of the Barcelona City Council, which connects families without a support network in the city with people willing to dedicate part of their time to temporarily care for their children. 

"There are children who change your life," proclaims the volunteer, who joined the collaborating families two and a half years ago. Since then, she has helped care for two sisters two Saturdays a month for nearly two years; a boy one afternoon a week for a year; another boy on specific occasions, and a girl especially during holiday periods. These are schedules and collaborations tailored to the needs of the families and, first and foremost, their children: the well-being of the minor is the priority of the service, managed by the Fundació Surt. 

"The service is very flexible," highlights the SFC coordinator and psychologist, Mayca Velasco. The objective of the service, which last year assisted 62 minors, is to complement the work of families who cannot take care of their children at certain times and situations, for reasons ranging from work responsibilities to hospitalizations that temporarily prevent caring for the minor, to mothers who are victims of violence and need spaces to take care of themselves without their children losing "the warmth of home and the attention they need." 

Regardless of the reason, families access the service referred by educational, social, or health professionals. Despite the variety of situations, user families often have in common that they have few resources to seek professional support alternatives on their own. Among them, 66% are single-mother households, while 7% are single-parent households. In other cases, couples are separated, and "there are few cases" where two adults are in charge of the minors, as detailed by Velasco alongside Silvia Collado, Project Manager of the Department of Social Care for Children and Families at the Institut Municipal de Serveis Socials. Collaborating families, in turn, vary in models and ages: most are couples with children, but there are also individual volunteers and single people with children in their care, who act as a "complement" to the minor's family, and not as a substitute, Collado emphasizes. 

The service, which has been running for 38 years, currently has 79 collaborating families, and aims to increase this number to also expand the families it supports and have a "sufficiently large and diverse pool of volunteers to respond to all requests," according to Velasco. From her experience as a volunteer, Quima believes that the SFC's barrier is the fact that it is a unique service, and that it is a proposal that only exists in Barcelona: "It is often difficult to understand, because you don't have references of similar cases." And it is that "it is not an adoption or a foster care, and even less, a babysitter. It is a different category: being a collaborating family." 

And this category has unique elements, which involve the incorporation of the child into the dynamics of the volunteer family, as Quima relates. "It forces you to be more flexible: when you have your own child, you do it your way, based on your values and ways of doing things, and here you find children who have a different background and customs that you should not try to change, but rather you have to make them compatible with your life. And this is enrichment," highlights the volunteer. 

For her, this element is differential: "When you are a babysitter, you adapt to the other's life; here, no, the child enters your life." And it accompanies the volunteer in their dynamics, whether it's grocery shopping, a family reunion, or a date with friends. "It's very positive that they also enjoy your network, and it's enriching for everyone," Quima defends. So much so that she spent last Christmas with her family and a child and mother from the service. "It was a game-changer and broke many dynamics, because sharing experiences like this makes you more flexible and makes you more open," says the volunteer, who jokes referring to the bond generated through the service as that of "an artificial aunt." 

The contact with Quima's network becomes evident with the dilemma of one of the children she collaborates with, who is often also with the volunteer's parents: "He tells me that he still doesn't know if he wants to celebrate his fifth birthday at my house, or at my parents' house. His mother dies laughing, and says we'll figure it out," the volunteer laughs. Situations like this not only hint at the relationships that children can weave with volunteers and their networks, but also the tranquility and trust that the service can transmit to the families of the children. Although sometimes relationships are limited to the service, in others this "magical fit" occurs that takes the relationship further, even when the formal collaboration ends. Thus, the bonds generated through collaborating families do not have to break when leaving the SFC circuit. "It does not imply a break, the service can be transcended," as Quima herself does with a child and his mother, with whom she collaborated for a year. 

To facilitate these "magic fits," the service matches volunteer families with users based on their characteristics and logistics, also taking into account their proximity. The collaborating families, who go through a validation process, maintain a constant relationship with the SFC. The service does this by "providing support and accompaniment to collaborating families with their doubts," especially in the first encounters, which are carried out gradually and respecting the children's rhythms, according to Velasco. All with one goal: "To generate artificial networks that transform into natural ones".

Those interested in becoming collaborating families can contact by phone at 93 291 59 66 and 93 291 59 67, or send an email to sfc@bcn.cat.