25 listopada 2025
The coffee is cooling, the notebook lists urgent tasks, and the heart still echoes last night’s difficult conversation. In one moment you have to keep calm beside someone whose emotions are peaking; in the next, you need to encourage another person and offer a smile. This is the daily reality of residential care educators: putting out fires and building bridges at the same time. They do it every day. But who looks after them, day in, day out?
The staff of residential care facilities are often an invisible, forgotten group for whom the system rarely finds funds for meaningful training and workshops. Yet without space to decompress and reflect, such demanding work leads to burnout—which in turn can affect the quality of care for children. That is why the Foundation for Good Initiatives (FDI) has launched a nationwide, first-of-its-kind support and development programme for professionals working in the foster care system: the FDI Educators’ Development Group.
Last weekend in Warsaw we inaugurated the project with the first meeting of a six-month series. Educators came from across Poland. Not to “tick a training box,” but to build a safe space for sustained work over the months ahead.
The Group’s innovative format—grounded in regularity and high-quality facilitation—ensures continuity of development. Thanks to a hybrid model, it also offers diversity and accessibility: participants can join regardless of distance.
A major strength of the project is that educators are not just recipients here. As a group of expert practitioners—people who know the procedures, recognise risks, have tried-and-tested responses, and a well-honed language for relating to children—they can, drawing on their own resources, experience, and knowledge, co-create the best solutions to the challenges faced by members of the group, while also being a source of mutual support. The role of FDI facilitators is to create the conditions in which this tacit knowledge is surfaced, ordered, and turned into good practices—shared, repeatable, and implementable in other facilities.
We opened the inaugural weekend of the FDI Educators’ Development Group with a shared dinner and time to connect. It was a chance to get to know one another, set expectations, and name our needs. Even that first evening, it was clear we were building an atmosphere of trust: clear rules, confidentiality, kindness, and permission to speak about difficult things without taboo.
The working day began with an integration session for the twelve participants and the creation of a group contract—concrete rules to guide us throughout the programme. One element of the meeting was reflection on each person’s professional path. Participants took stock of where they started, which moments were demanding, and what they are most proud of today. Such structured reflection on career development helps gain perspective on personal experiences and normalises talking about them in a group.
We closed with our first intervision session, in which we dissected a real case from a facility. Together with the participants, we mapped the risks and considered how best to act in such situations in future.
We ended the meeting by compiling a list of topics the participants want to explore in the coming weeks. These included, among others: methods for responding to challenging behaviours, sharing practice, crisis situations, and tools for working with a child.
Between exercises there was also time for a shared meal and ordinary conversation. These are part of the programme too—reminding us that good practice is born when we give one another time and attention.
From now on we will meet online every week until spring. That’s six months of focused work for the adults who are close to children—so they can be closer still, calmer, and more effective. Our aim is for this project to deliver tangible improvements in educators’ work and in the everyday life of children in residential care.
The quality of care in children’s homes rises when we strengthen the adults who work there. The FDI Educators’ Development Group gives them what is often missing amid the daily “firefighting”: space for calm, reflective practice; wise exchange of methods; non-judgemental support; and help in building an action plan. This is professional and emotional development that directly translates into children’s sense of safety.
To all the educators taking part in this project we want to say: thank you—for your openness, energy, kindness, and desire to grow. For your readiness to speak about difficult things and to listen to one another. This weekend was an extraordinary and valuable experience—for you and for us. We are convinced this is the start of a fascinating journey that, by spring, will bear many good fruits for you and your young people.
We want groups like this to run regularly and reach staff in ever more facilities. If you can, please support this project financially. Every donation means more hours of work with adults—hours that become calm and safety for children.
👉 Support the FDI Educators’ Development Group: https://fdi.org.pl/wspieram/
📩 Contact/partnerships (ESG/CSR): biuro@fdi.org.pl
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In our Good Mood Journal, you will not only read many good news stories but also reports on our activities for children and youth in foster care.
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