The Family Approach

Somewhere in Brandenburg, in a group home that feels like a large family house, five children sit around the dinner table. Here, caregivers strive to create a nurturing environment for children who haven’t found their place in the family or school system, and who have often grown up without warmth. Among them is ten-year-old Niklas, whose mother fails to show up for scheduled visits. Kelvin, about the same age, asks his mother on the phone when she’ll come see him. Not this month, she says, nor the next. Where parents are absent, overwhelmed by the weight of difficult lives, educators step in. Antje, Max, and Sören walk the children to school, advocate on their behalf with child protection services, play cards with them… They know how to listen, how to understand, how to offer affection. Over the course of several years, Daniel Abma follows them with a gentle, attentive gaze, capturing not only the hardships, but above all the tenderness: that which is expressed in gestures, and in the spaces between words. In doing so, he reminds us of what truly makes a family — beyond blood ties.
Mourad-Anis Moussa