Saint Petersburg Foundation for Crisis Psychological Help for Children and Youth “New Steps” is a non-governmental non-profit organization, uniting professional psychologists that work to help children and families. The "New steps" Foundation started its activities in 1995.
"New steps" Foundation's primary goals are:
• Organization and providing psychological help to children, teenagers and their parents in crisis situations mostly connected to child abuse.
• Specialized trainings for professionals dealing with children who suffered from physical, sexual, emotional abuse and needs' neglect.
• Facilitating activities of non-profitable organizations and government owned services providing social services to make their work with children and families more effective.
• Facilitation for specialists working with children and their families to prevent burnout syndrome.
• Expert evaluation of the effectiveness of social services and consulting in planning and projecting perspectives to help children and their families for donors and grantees.
"New Steps" Foundation's activity is financed by grant programs, its employees' contribution and volunteers.
Due to seminars that “New Steps” Foundation held since the mid 1990s about child abuse and neglect, many professional psychologists and social workers, teachers and doctors from different Russian regions (St Petersburg, Moscow, Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Kazan, Tomsk, Surgut, Barnaul, Khabarovsk, Magadan and others) got their first trainings for understanding the child abuse and developed skills to detect abuse and provide social and psychological help to children.
The most of well-known non-profit organizations offering help to children and troubled families in St Petersburg used services of “New Steps” psychologists to train their own employees and their partners from community social services.
In 2001-2009 under financial support US-Russia program «Assistance to Russian Orphans» the specialists of the “New Steps” Foundation participated at various activities for developing and implementing regional programs for early detection of child abuse and developing techniques to assist children who had been subject to abuse in different Russian regions (Tomsk, Barnaul, Khabarovsk, Magadan). The «New Steps» psychologists trained and supervised activities of multidiscipline groups of specialists and followed up their results in these regions.
In 2006-2007 the «New Steps» psychologists contributed to program aimed at helping children, parents and teachers in the town of Beslan (North Ossetia region) that had been attacked by terrorists who hostaged school pupils on September, 01, 2004.
In 2006-2009 and 2012-2014 «New steps» implemented a program to prevent burn-out syndrome for non-profit organizations offering help to children and their families in St Petersburg.
Due to work with a number of social services in St Petersburg and Moscow the «New Steps» psychologists developed a method to conduct psychological group for troubled parents (alcohol abusing, neglecting children's needs or abusing them). It increased the effectiveness of help provided to parents and improve children's family situations (reduction of abuse incidents; parents compliance with social programs increased; early detection of other issues).
The “New Steps” has been assisting work of a volunteer hot line for adolescents in Saint Petersburg. The counselors of the line are volunteers aged 18-21, mostly university students, who have been trained by the «New Steps» psychologists. The most of callers to the line are children and young people who have difficulties in communicating with peers or parents, some of them – young people with special needs and other complex problems.
Specialists of «New Steps» published some books and guides for professionals in social and psychological help:
IRINA ALEXEEVA, ILYA NOVOSELSKIY "Child Abuse. Causes. Effects. Help."
Moscow: The National Foundation for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 2010.- 460 pages. - 2nd edition, expanded and revised
Moscow: The National Foundation for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 2013.- 470 pages. - 3d edition, expanded and revised
The books were published with the financial support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the "Assistance to Russian Orphans’” Program.
IRINA ALEXEEVA, ILYA NOVOSELSKIY "Rehabilitation work at the orphanage home with children who have experienced psychological trauma. Guide for professionals."
IRINA ALEXEEVA, ILYA NOVOSELSKIY "Rehabilitation work with children who have experienced psychological trauma."
Moscow: The National Foundation for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, 2013.- 238 pages.
The book was published with the financial support of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the "Assistance to Russian Orphans’” Program
IRINA ALEXEEVA, ILYA NOVOSELSKIY "How to hear the kid" - Guidelines and toolkit for professionals interviewing abused and neglected kids of illegal emigrants from Republic of Moldova to clarify and articulate the position of the child in relation to the future and the possible repatriation to the Republic of Moldova from Russia.
The books was published with the financial support of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) under the Program of “Terre des hommes Moldova” Foundation
IRINA ALEXEEVA, ILYA NOVOSELSKIY, ELINA ZHILINA, TATIANA LUPOLISHINA "Work with traumatized children." - Guidelines for group training."
Saint-Petersburg: “Rech” Publishing house, 2012.- 156 pages.
Irina Alexeeva - Director General of Saint Petersburg Foundation for Crisis Psychological Help for Children and Youth “New Steps”, Expert of The National Foundation for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (Moscow), 2004-2005 Honorary Member of International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN)
Contact Us:
By e-mail (in russian or english): newsteps@newsteps.ru
By phone (in russian): +7 (812) 980-5311
By mail (in russian or english):
199178, Russia, Saint-Petersburg, 10 line of Vassilevskiy Ostrov, build.59 «Marcus», office 419