In Germany, children with increased support status receive benefits for integration assistance, which must be applied for. These applications are often rejected for refugee children, and institutions such as the Kinderhaus St. Bartholomäus are dependent on support in order to be able to finance the therapeutic measures.
Language plays an important role in the integration of children. Refugee children not only find it difficult to learn the foreign language, but also to speak their own language. They are often traumatised and find it difficult to process what they have experienced. In order to nevertheless enable them to have a good school career and later an easier entry into professional life, the Regine Sixt Children's Aid Foundation has made therapeutic support possible for both the affected children and the educators. The children receive targeted measures via a dedicated project plan and the caregivers learn specific games and integration measures from the therapists in order to involve the entire kindergarten group. In this way, the refugee children learn the language faster together with the other children and are integrated more quickly.
St. Bartholomew's Kinderhaus can report from past years of successfully formed friendships between refugee children and German children that still continue. The integration is often intergenerational and the children's parents also share a friendship. Some report positively about the broadening of cultural horizons and are happy that their children are part of the support programme.
