Help for children needs help themselves – Lörrach district

. The BZ solidarity campaign “Help to help” supports charitable associations and social institutions in the Lörrach district. But it also helps individuals unbureaucratically and throughout the year. This series introduces people who are being helped, but also institutions that need support in order to be able to help and receive donations for it. Today it is about the offer “Kisel” of the drug and youth advice center of the working group intoxicants (AKRM) for children of addicted parents.

Addicts can get help when they want. However, their children’s problems often remain in the dark. They often get out of sight of society. But the numbers show that these children urgently need help. Over two and a half million children and young people under the age of 18 live with parents who are addicted or one of the parents who are addicted. Calculated down to the Lörrach district, there are around 6,000 young people affected. In another 4,000 families there are children with a mentally distressed or ill parent. Research shows that every third child of alcoholic parents becomes an alcoholic themselves; Children of parents with addictions have a six-fold higher risk of developing an addiction themselves.

In order to work preventively in this area, the drug and youth counseling center launched the “Kisel” offer (children of parents with addictions) in 2006. There are now five groups with children of different ages, three in Lörrach, one in Rheinfelden and one in Weil am Rhein. Up to ten children per group are looked after by trained professionals. The group in Weil am Rhein was only started in 2018 in cooperation with the Diakonisches Werk of the district.

There are good reasons why AKRM has teamed up with Diakonie. The Diakonisches Werk has been looking after children of mentally ill parents for years, an area with a similar content. “This creates synergy effects and we can use our competencies together,” says Frank Meißner from AKRM. The living environment of the children of parents with addiction is often similar to that of the children of parents with mental illness. “In the groups, the children experience that they are not alone with their problems,” explains Meißner.

The AKRM would like to bring its offer to the area, therefore the groups outside Lörrach and the branch offices of the drug and youth counseling are important. At the beginning of the year, the working group had high hopes that the district would get involved in the financing of the projects on a permanent basis. Then came Corona. The AKRM will now receive five percent less funding for 2021, i.e. just under 343,000 instead of 361,000 euros. Nevertheless one would like to hold on to “Kisel” and is looking for sponsors and supporters. “We dare to continue the project for a year,” says Meißner.