On Homeless School supported the vulnerable to find their strengths, for all have something to offer. Superintendent Robert Olsen age of 60 years 7. april.
When Astrid Krag (S) was social secretary of the interior after the general election last summer, was Homeless School one of the first institutions she visited.
Robert Olsen accepted along with some of the pupils who are taught in school or working in the workshops. The minister also met four young people who have been previously homeless. Now living in villas and apartments near the school, and they could tell about broken families and the security of finally having a place to sleep.
Better presentation of its new territory, could the minister not have wanted. Superintendent Robert Olsen, who has attained 60 years of age 7. april, has in it most of his life worked with people who have difficulty finding a foothold.
Since 2011 as superintendent of Homeless School, in addition to the “headquarters” in Holmbladsgade on Amager has branches in Aarhus, Aalborg and Nuuk and datterskoler in nine countries in Eastern and Central europe.
Every day, there are more than 600 students in the school’s departments in Copenhagen and in Jutland. They are taught as different subjects like yoga, cooking, English and it.
Other work in the school shops or in the workshops. Regardless of who they are and what problems they are struggling with, so it happens from the idea of help to self-help.
But not at the moment, where coronapandemien have closed the teaching and workshops. Instead they use staff time to keep contact on telephone with the students. They are hard hit, for many living alone with the school as the sole point of reference.
Robert Olsen is a trained nurse, but it was not the classic nursing, which occupied him. He wrote afgangsopgave on alcohol abuse and was later employed in psychiatry and of institutions for the homeless and addicts.
The experience led him to the Men’s Home, where he for 17 years was the superintendent. The home is Scandinavia’s most visited social services – centrally located at the corner of Istedgade and the Small Istedgade on Vesterbro.
When he began, it was the heroin that controlled their everyday lives. Today it is cocaine, but also marijuana, which with the years has become stronger and thus more addictive.
The social indignation came with growing up in Nørrebro. In the childhood home were discussing the parents policy, often seen with the most vulnerable eyes. Both parents were well educated, but at the time Nørrebro other than today, just as it put its mark on the family, to one team, grandparents were deaf and dumb.
in addition to being the principal at Homeless School’s Robert Olsen, chairman of the Copenhagen Municipality Frivilligråd and a member of the Copenhagen Municipal councils of socially disadvantaged groups.
He is married and has two adult children.
/ritzau/
