From the 20th to the 22nd of February Caritas Augsburg hosted a conference on the topic ‘A counseling perspective on return migration of children’ in Augsburg. Talks were given on a wide range of perspectives on the counseling of minors in the process of return migration, from different methods of psychosocial preparation of children of various ages to a necessary shift in focus from problems to solutions.
The reintegration partners provided the ERSO-members with information on the conditions under which children are living in the countries of return and the possibilities for children in each of these countries. They stressed the importance of preparing children before the actual return, especially when the children concerned have never lived in the country of origin. One of the principal lessons to be learned from the conference was the importance of focusing primarily on the needs of the children in the returning family, while always retaining a suiting respect for the power relations within the family.
In sum, we can look back on a very interesting and thought-provoking conference.