This master's thesis deals with the importance of parental involvement in working with adolescents who are placed in residential institutions. The active participation of parents, typical of a family-oriented approach following research findings, results in a more successful treatment of adolescents. In the introduction to this thesis I define the characteristics of vulnerable families and present the more frequent reasons for the installation of young people in various forms of extra-family education. Then I describe the work of residential institutions, and in this context, I especially emphasize the participation of professionals with the families. This is followed by a presentation of various forms of work with the family and the characteristics of a family-centered approach and practices in this field both at home and abroad.
In the empirical part of the task, I did a research on how the cooperation with the family is experienced by the parents of adolescents who are placed in residential institutions, the adolescents themselves and their educators. In doing so, I was interested in how the existing cooperation activates and involves parents and focuses on both the needs of the child and the parents as well as on the whole family? I was looking for the features which are included in cooperation, how it is reflected in the adolescent and in the whole family context? I used a qualitative research approach in my research. In a sample of the research, I included three adolescents placed in a residential institution, one of the parents of each adolescent, who is most often in contact with a nurse in the institution and three educators of adolescents.
The results of the research show that educators, parents and adolescents believe that when entering and dealing with a teenager in a residential institution the most important thing is to ensure a sense of equivalence, acceptance, understanding and honest communication. In their cooperation educators and parents face obstacles that are most often associated with disunity in views on upbringing. Educators believe that the field of cooperation with parents should be better regulated by legislation since they estimate that in the current framework there is not enough time, financial resources and competences of educational action. They propose several informal meetings with families and to improve cooperation with Social Work Centres. Parents, unlike educators, do not express the need for more frequent meetings and strive for the autonomy of parental education. Adolescents face different demands from parents and educators, trying to adapt to everything and to be accepted by educators.
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