New mission in Setúbal: collaboration in the service of girls and young women at Casa Nossa Senhora da Saúde – Welcome, Repair, Educate and Empower

26 Nov New mission in Setúbal: collaboration in the service of girls and young women at Casa Nossa Senhora da Saúde – Welcome, Repair, Educate and Empower

Posted at 17:54h in Challenges, Education, news by

A new collaboration in the service of life

Since March 2025, we have begun a new collaboration in the Diocese of Setúbal, in a residential care home for girls and young women called Casa Nossa Senhora da Saúde. It is a social solidarity association, canonically erected in 1982.
After a process of discernment, the Europe-Atlantic Province has signed a three-year collaboration agreement, serving the 37 girls welcomed there. This collaboration is carried out from the Palmela Community, thus expanding its mission.

A therapeutic model in harmony with our charism

I believe that the therapeutic intervention model adopted by the CNSS technical team – the AREA model: welcome, repair, educate and empower – has been “the cherry on top”, as we say in Portugal. A therapeutic approach fully aligned with our charism.

CNSS is a residential home providing comprehensive care and educational support for girls and young women under guardianship and/or protection measures, who have been deprived of an adequate family environment (neglect, abuse, violence…). Their stay in the centre is determined by the judicial or administrative decision that led to their admission.


Educational support and integral development

The essential aim of the actions carried out at CNSS is to provide the 37 residents with the attention and protection necessary to ensure their integrity and proper development, through an educational accompaniment that is close and caring, yet firm and structuring. The 2017 booklet “Our Educational Style” summarises well what we try to build here, 24 hours a day.

It is also a priority for CNSS to offer the necessary training to strengthen each girl’s individual process, helping her to overcome personal, social and family difficulties. The protocolled areas include:

  • training for CNSS collaborators and staff;
  • Promoting the inclusion of girls and young women in care: activities that promote comprehensive development: personal, academic, professional and spiritual, as well as working on their life projects and future independence.
  • accompanying the preparation of the 2025–2027 Educational Project;
  • collaboration in the evaluation and training of potential “friend families”;
  • support in the empowerment of natural families and their involvement in their daughters’ educational process.

Healing wounds, rebuilding lives

 Healing deep wounds — wounds that should never exist — and helping each girl and young woman recover the resources that enable her to reconnect with herself, with her reference groups, and with the community: this is the horizon we hold for each one we accompany.

🙏 A mission we can all share: “and if not, with prayers”

Thanks to the inspiration received by Saint Rafaela Mary, “and if not, with prayers”, this new mission can be shared by each one of us. Here is the invitation: “And if not, with your prayers” for this fully reparative mission, 24 hours a day.

November 2025

Irene Guia, aci

Tags:
, , , ,