Country: Croatia
Email: irena.mladez@gmail.com
Tel: +385 91 218 96 06 

For the last 15 years, I’ve been working as the head manager of an Advisory center for children and youth at The Red Cross society of the City of Sisak. Immediately after graduating college in 1993., I started working for the Croatian Red Cross/IFRC in programmes of psychosocial support for refugees and displaced persons living in collective centres. There, with more educations related to working with trauma, I gained first experiences in working with vulnerable groups of people, mostly children and youth. Within the 28 years of working experience in different sectors, my work is mainly pointed at dealing with young people with behavioural issues, peer violence, emotional difficulties, depression, anxiety, auto-destructive behaviour, poor self-esteem and low self-confidence, relationship and socialization problems and families exposed to traumatic events.

The responsibility for this kind of work led me to supplement my knowledge and discover a psychotherapeutic direction – reality therapy. This access affected me personally and marked my professional approach in working with different clients, helped me understand the specificity of individual functioning, family systems and relations, especially under the pressure of different crisis.

Besides the treatment work in the Advisory center, a part of my professional engagement are preventive activities, workshops in elementary and high schools, as well as educations meant for experts of different profiles working with children and youth. For the last 10 years, I’m actively participating in programmes focused on prevention of discriminatory behaviours. In 2016., I received a Thank you Certificate from the City of Sisak for promoting human rights and tolerance.