Hauser, S: Coaching von Frauen nach der Geburt eines Kindes

A considerable number of projects, initiatives, private and public programs have set themselves the task to support mothers' re-entry into employment after a prolonged period of child-raising leave. We saw the weakness in these approaches in the fact that these projects try to correct the dequalification after it took place. Would it not be feasible to avoid the dequalification taking place in the first place? One would have to intervene at the start of the child-raising leave, rather than at its end. This is what the participants of the project documented in this volume have undertaken to try.The innovative character of such an attempt meant that neither were there examples the participants functioning as coaches in the project could look for and profit from, nor was there any pre-existing awareness or felt need for such an endeavor on the part of the young mothers approached. Everything was experimental. While some of the techniques used were taken from the literature on coaching, much had to be of an ad-hoc type. Coaching has traditionally been offered to top sport participants, to senior managers and to groups at work. To offer coaching to young mothers with lesser formal qualifications had not been tried. The focus on getting this right may explain - and hopefully excuse - the fact that the evaluations of these approaches have sometimes turned out somewhat informal, with clients' reports being a main source of validation. However, the first point the authors were trying to make was that it could be done. The fact that clients remained true to this voluntary activity until it ended according to the schedule that had been agreed in advance was taken as a prima facie validation. Further research will have to look into such questions as quality control and improvement.