’My mum’s coming to negotiations and I sure hope it’ll be a good talk and that I can go home, and that home won’t be a place where we tear each other to pieces, like. I want my home to be a place where we can talk about things. For real.’ (Kaisu)

Red Cross Emergency Youth Shelters offer young people and their families the following services free of charge.

Networking with families

Emergency Youth Shelters work with a young person, their family, and the wider network of people around them, to achieve goals that they have set jointly. Through deliberation together with the youth’s family and social network, Shelter staff help the family find appropriate support systems and to define the areas of responsibility for each party. In difficult situations, a family meeting can be arranged in the evening without prior appointment or, if necessary, even at the young person’s home.

Emergency beds

Emergency Youth Shelters provide a safe environment in which young people at risk can stay overnight, weekdays from 5 p.m. to 10 a.m. the following morning. In addition, the Espoo Emergency Youth Shelter provides a place of safety where young people can go during the day throughout the weekend. Young people staying at the shelters are offered breakfast, an evening meal, and/or a light snack before bed. During any period in which a young person is staying at an Emergency Youth Shelter the main aim is to allow time for the people concerned to calm down so that the young person and their parents can be helped to resolve their difficulties.

Open client status

Emergency Youth Shelters also give young people the option of attending as a so-called open client, i.e. they can use the counselling and other services without necessarily staying overnight at a shelter. Open clients come to a shelter according to their own needs for private sessions and/or meetings involving the entire family.

Counselling, guidance, and conversation

Emergency Youth Shelters offer counselling and advice to help young people cope in all kinds of difficult situations. Counselling can be given either over the phone or when a young person visits a shelter in person. Conversation is used to define what help and support would most benefit the young person and their family. Through such counselling, staff at the Emergency Youth Shelters can help young people to feel better and to keep going.

Therapy services

Until the end of 2007, the Emergency Youth Shelter in Helsinki is running a project called Terapiahuone, or Therapy Room, which offers therapy services for young people and their families.

More information about Therapy room (17.01 kilobytes)

Also, the Emergency Youth Shelter in Turku can, when needed, arrange for a young person to see to a psychotherapist who specialises in crisis and trauma.

Supporting independence

The Emergency Youth Shelters in Helsinki, Vantaa, Tampere and Turku offer support to young people who need help to become independent and live on their own, to take care of their health and/or studies, and to those who have tried living on their own but have yet to make a success of it. In such cases, an individual services package is created, taking into account the young person’s particular needs and any requirement they may have for rehabilitation through family and social work. Also, a suitable flat can be found for the young person. For this service, the local council of the young person’s home town is charged a fee according to an agreed contract between the council and the shelter.

Ask more about the services on offer from your local Emergency Youth Shelter.