“Child-friendly church. Directions for self-assessment” FORM

For your activity to be successful, it is essential to periodically review what and how steps were taken, whether the goals were achieved and further actions. The key objective of creating a child-friendly environment is children’s safety and integration.

As part of the “Child-Friendly Church” project, we have prepared a form for you, which can help you analyse your work with children from the point of view of the child’s safety and integration into parish life, see your strengths and weaknesses in this area and find the ways to improve.

The form is based on eight goals, which are guidelines for assessing the “child-friendliness” of one’s parish/organisation. To reach these goals, we first turned to the scientific works of the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant churches on this topic. They also conducted their research - focus groups, in which 55 lay adults, 5 children and 20 representatives of the clergy of the UGCC participated. In this way, we outlined the indicators of a child-friendly Church among the laity and the clergy.

You can fill out the form on your own or with your team, make a summary for yourself, and, based on the indicators, devise a further strategy for working with children.

“A child-friendly Church does more than merely teach. It sees the needs of the child, mother, and family and tries to address them.”

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