Member Spotlight August 2018

Susret in a few lines?

If you are placed in a mental health institution or hospital, having a home of your own, belongings, or even a private room can seem like a distant dream. It can feel like being labelled as a person with mental health problems is the end of the road when it comes to living in the community.

The Association for Psychosocial Support – ‘Susret’ (which means encounter in Croatian) – is a small not-for-profit organisation which was established in Zagreb, Croatia, in 2006. We help people with mental health difficulties to live in the community again. In fact, we pioneered this approach in Croatia – when Susret opened there were no social services for mental health available in the community at all!

What are your main activities?

Our services include community based housing and community support for recovery for people who previously lived in foster care or mental health institutions. We support them in the transition to independent living and full social participation.

As a person-centred organisation, our services support every person to gain power and control over her/his life through access to meaningful choices and opportunities.

What are your priorities?

Our services focus on the promotion of personal and social recovery. We’re guided by the goals, aspirations and wishes of the person. We support people to be artists, sport champions, poets, workers, chess players, partners, and much more.

Our greatest achievement is when our clients are capable of enjoying social participation and community living without our support. Basically, we want each person to continue his/her life independently.

What’s new at Susret?

We have a new project called Helpific Croatia. The Helpific platform promotes participation and social integration through modern technologies. It was established as a startup in Estonia in 2014 and has been successfully tested across Europe. It has over 3,000 registered users and 450 interactions (matches).

Helpific is based on the sharing economy model. It facilitates the creation of links/relationships in the local community to increase the social capital of vulnerable groups of people with disabilities.

Helpific is neither an agency, nor a service provider, nor a volunteer centre. The Helpific platform matches citizens on an equal level and, in that way, strengthens the local community. The aim of the project is to enable people with disabilities to have a more independent life and to significantly improve the quality of their everyday life, every day.

You can find out more about Helpific at www.helpific.com.

Where can we find out more?

To find out more about Susret, click here to send an email to the organisation.