About Us

PAJE

Many of the children who have lived for long periods in residential care institutions are early victims of their families and/or of society. When they reach adulthood, many leave the homes where they grew up without any support. It is common to find cognitive impairment and fragile social skills, among other adversities that make the transition to independent living more difficult.

Under the aegis of the Instituto de Psicologia Cognitiva e Desenvolvimento Humano e Social (Institute of Cognitive Psychology and Human and Social Development) – Universidade de Coimbra, the Support Platform for Young Care Leavers (PAJE) was created. It aims to promote the social and labour-market inclusion of young adults, providing support both in everyday situations and in more continuous/deeper ones, with the help of a multidisciplinary team, contributing to a secure and reassuring environment, so necessary for those who have already suffered abandonment.

Plataforma PAJE – Support for Young Care Leavers also sets out to provide support (psychological, legal, advice/counselling, etc.) on an informal basis, placing the knowledge and experience of volunteer professionals at the service of those on whom fortune did not smile at an early stage of life.

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR

“As founder and Chair of the Board of Plataforma PAJE, I am delighted to have brought together a valuable team capable of setting in motion a project that intends to go far beyond a welfare-assistance approach. Resulting from the will and initiative of a group of people with humanist concerns, it aspires to create the conditions to change the paradigm for the young people who leave the care system in Portugal in their thousands every year. Launching this project would not have been possible without the collaboration of strategic partners and of the volunteers, and so to all of them I offer a word of profound gratitude.”

João Pedro Gaspar
Chair of the Board

HISTORY

Through more than fifteen years of constant contact with children and young people removed from their birth families and living in institutions, it was very easy to realise that the adults with whom they spent the most time were their role models. Anyone who aspires to contribute to children’s education and upbringing wants, above all, to equip them with knowledge and values that will stay with them for ever and be an asset in their future lives. But passing on knowledge is much easier than passing on values, since values are only understood and imitated when they are lived day to day.

It was from this need to create strong and lasting bonds with young people and children, in informal settings, that “Projeto Cativar” (the “Captivate” project) was born, run for years with the children and young people of a Lar de Infância e Juventude (children and young people’s home). The project was intended as an invitation to people to become ever more humane, to win one another over and to understand one another. It was extremely rewarding to feel that the children and young people finally had the sense of belonging to a group in which they felt secure, where bonds of trust, friendship, generosity and responsibility were increasingly fostered.

Out of a fear that institutions showed little concern for transitions and for the process of moving to independent living, and a wish to understand better what was failing in that process, a piece of research was carried out which culminated in a doctoral thesis presented to the Universidade de Coimbra, “Os desafios da autonomização: Estudo compreensivo dos processos de transição para diferentes contextos de vida, na perspectiva de adultos e jovens adultos ex-institucionalizados” (The challenges of the transition to independent living: a comprehensive study of the processes of transition to different life contexts, from the perspective of formerly institutionalised adults and young adults). The study’s most troubling conclusions concerned the unpreparedness of carers, the limited preparation given for independent living and the lack of support after leaving care.

And so, given the length of time spent in close contact with the “captivated” young people, sharing anxieties and solutions to the various constraints, the desire grew to find support for all those who were early victims of society. The growing number of requests for help, and the inability to respond to them all in a systematic way, increased the need to create an institutional support network – it was in this context… that “PAJE” was born.