In the field of care for children and their family, the OKS Foundation always focussed on the complete system: child and parents, parents and family, family and experts. As far as experts from different disciplines are involved, the Foundation always highlighted two aspects: the need of high quality professional knowledge and skills, and the need to use these in a social normalised framework. How can the interests of both the family and the professional systems remain aligned? It comes down to bringing the 'human capital' in society together. From this vision, OKS works to promote expertise and to create a different focus on the context and the involvement of citizens in the public functions of safety and care.
In what manner?
By bringing together many hundreds of workers in promoting small-scale residential youth care, (supporting the) training of more than a thousand coaches of foster care groups, initially in the Netherlands, Belgium and the Scandinavian countries, but later in more European countries, educating the first hundred independent community coordinators to carry out family conferences, not the name of the Foundation, but the product names have become known: ‘Family homes, the STAP-program, the PRIDE Model of Practice, the Eigen-kracht conference and the Echt-recht conference. For all those products, the Foundation is or was the guardian of the concept, and monitored the preservation of integrity, and was the driving force behind transferring the 'right of ownership' on that concept to children and families and workers in the care sector.