Working with Street Boys: Importance of Creating a Socially Safe Environment through Social Partnership, and Collaboration through Peer-based Interaction

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Street children are the most excluded group of people in any society. The general attitude towards them is to criminalise and pathologise. The “To-gather with Children Project” (TCP) has been developed by the Maltepe University Research and Application Centre for Street Children (SOYAC) in Istanbul and implemented in conjunction with the General Directorate of Social Services and Child Protection Agency (SHÇEK). SHÇEK is the core state agency responsible for street children and their protection in Turkey. The TCP started in September 2010. Within the scope of this project, undergraduate psychology students visited SHCEK organisations for three hours on a weekly basis to engage with the children in joint activities that ranged from games and sports to training programmes, including helping the children with literacy skills. In June 2011, in-depth interviews were carried out with the children and their service providers for the purposes of evaluating the project. Findings are discussed from the Sociocultural Activity Theory, Child's Perspective, and Peer-based Intervention. This paper explores the outcomes of this research, which strongly put forward the importance of government–university partnership, of creating a socially safe environment through social partnership including peer-based intervention in working with street-involved children.