CPAS Forest

CPAS Forest

The CPAS of Forest (Public Center of Social action) is a public institution endowed with the legal entity. His first mission is to allow each person to live a life in compliance with the human dignity and thus to assure the people and the families the help owed by the community. This is the way the CPAS brings the help the most adequate to every person in situation of need.

To bring to a successful conclusion this mission, the CPAS of Forest consists of various services(departments) proposing the ways the most suited to satisfy the demands of his public. Among them, the Sociocultural department, the Social Coordination of Forest (CSF) and the AMU unit (Urgent Medical aid) play an important role in the support and the integration of the accompanied and unaccompanied minors(MENA) within our institution. These departments support them by granting them an administrative help, a social and moral support, by serving as intermediary with labor and management, departments of care, hospitals, medical houses and pharmacies.

The social work is nevertheless centered on case by case: according to the problem, we handle the demand or we reorientate it towards other departments.

We work, among others, with Maison Babel and Mentor-Escale. The Maison Babel aims at accompanying unaccompanied minors(MENA) having obtained a residence permit in Belgium, wishing to realize a life plan and to settle down in a autonomous way in Brussels. The structure so assures a transition between the federal reception centers and the individual and autonomous coverage of the situation of the minor(MENA).

Mentor-Escale accompanies for more than 20 years the unaccompanied minors (MENA) in their course towards the autonomy.

The CSF gathers associations and departments of the psycho-medico-social, educational and cultural field in a marigold of identification, articulation and coordination of the initiatives of prevention and struggle against poverty, the social exclusion and the precariousness towards the population of Forest. Within the CSF, a workgroup ” hospitable municipality ” was born in association with the local partners and set up various devices to contribute to the welcome of the undocumented people, including the children, (food and material aid, access to healthcare).

The Sociocultural Department and the cultural committee organize participative projects and numerous free and cultural activities, open to all. The cultural access is for us a full right, a tool necessary for the integration and for the exercise of the citizenship. We encourage the participation as a positive lever for their personal fulfillment, each one with its resources.

We also propose places of meeting, between the cultures, the generations, the roles and the genres. By our activities, we wish to simplify the access to the culture and to encourage the development and the appropriation of participative projects by our public, so many opportunities and ways to strengthen the power to act of the person on the course of its existence and on its integration within the society.