A meeting was held today at the City Administration in Smederevo with representatives of the Humanitarian Organisation “Dečje srce” from Belgrade, which has been providing the Personal Companion for a Child service in the territory of the City of Smederevo since 2017.
The Deputy Mayor of Smederevo, Vladimir Nešić, the Director of the Centre for Social Work Smederevo, Goran Ristić, the Head of the Department for Public Services, Violeta Maksimović, and Ljiljana Todorović, Head of the Section for Social and Health Protection, discussed the improvement of this service with the coordinator of the Personal Companion for a Child project, Sašenka Mirković, and her associate, Marija Perić.
“The City of Smederevo is fully committed to improving this service and supporting parents whose children need it. In this way, it wants to enable them to be included in mainstream education and community activities, with the aim of achieving the greatest possible level of independence,” said Vladimir Nešić.
The service currently covers 40 children in Smederevo, and RSD 36.9 million excluding VAT has been allocated from the city budget for this purpose for the school year just ended and the next one.
In line with the Strategy for the Development of Social Protection in the City of Smederevo for the period from 2023 to 2027, the number of users of the Personal Companion for a Child service is set to increase, as the number of requests from parents is clearly growing all the time, the meeting heard, among other things.
The Humanitarian Organisation “Dečje srce” from Belgrade cooperates well with the local government in Smederevo. It has existed for more than two decades and also provides its services to users in other cities in Serbia, and in Belgrade 1,040 boys and girls use the Personal Companion for a Child service.
