ELMO - Parents learn together in Offenbach

In weekly home visits, qualified parent mentors provide families with practical and everyday suggestions on how to promote their children's development and improve the parent-child bond. To this end, they complete a joint educational program with parents and child that is tailored to the educational needs of each family. The parent mentors encourage and support parents to regularly play, talk and practise age-appropriate skills with their children. They bring age-appropriate (educational) games, books and other materials, discuss parenting issues and raise awareness of child-friendly media use, healthy eating and sufficient exercise. Developmental problems are discussed with the parents and, if desired, contact is made with specialist services such as the early intervention center or the socio-pediatric center. As the German education system usually differs significantly from that of the home country, processes in educational institutions are also discussed. Expectations that daycare centers and schools have of parents are clarified and the responsibility that parents in Germany have for their children's educational process is made clear. If necessary, the parent mentors accompany the families to parents' meetings/parents' evenings and specialist services at the daycare center and school in order to reduce anxiety.

The home visits are supplemented by group events. In parent meetings and information events, parents can focus intensively on a topic based on the annual theme and the parents' wishes. In group meetings, parents can talk to each other in an informal atmosphere and do something together with the children. Of course, seasonal celebrations are also held, which are also open to other families. For the older children and their parents, there is also a vacation program with visits to cultural events/museums, excursions into nature and creative activities.

Most families who are accepted into the ELMO program have multiple burdens such as financial worries, insufficient living space, conflicts between partners, psychological or physical problems in the children, health problems, unclear residence status... ELMO supports the families in overcoming these individual problems. The staff ensure a "warm handover" to other specialist and advice centres and can thus achieve lasting stabilization for these families.

The parent mentors are the heart of the ELMO program. They come from very different cultural backgrounds, are usually bilingual or multilingual and have children themselves. They undergo training to prepare them for their work with the families. The parent mentors are closely supervised by the pedagogical specialists of the providers in order to ensure a professionally appropriate way of working at a high pedagogical level.

The providers are always looking for interested women (and men too!) who can imagine working as a parent mentor. A standard fee or expense allowance is paid for the work.