Jindřich Fialka’s Kind Place: child psychology covered by insurance

In a single week after the Kind Place children’s psychology centre signed contracts with the first health insurers in Czechia, demand for its services rose tenfold. Founder Jindřich Fialka had spent two years working toward exactly this kind of cooperation, and the clinic now has to expand rapidly.

The shortage of psychological care for children in Czechia is enormous, according to Fialka. The worst situation is with assessments by a clinical psychologist or child psychiatrist, but psychotherapeutic support is also in acutely short supply. A separate problem is care paid for by health insurance funds. “From the very beginning this was our goal: professional, humane, friendly and at the same time accessible,” he explains.

Fialka is known not only as the creator of Kind Place. He is behind the non-profit organisation Sto skupin, which builds kindergartens in Czechia, and he founded the innovation studio Q Designers. Its portfolio includes projects for the Komerční banka Foundation, the companies E.ON and Veolia, and the furniture chain IKEA.

In mid-September came a turning point: Kind Place signed contracts with the Czech Industrial Health Insurance Company, the General Health Insurance Company and the Škoda Employees’ Insurance Company. Their clients no longer have to pay for consultations, therapy and crisis interventions. Such services account for about 90% of all appointments at the centre. Together, these three insurers cover about 70% of the Czech market.

Where the centre previously took up to 400 sessions a week and deliberately did not fill its capacity completely, leaving clients free choice of times, the situation has now changed. A free slot sometimes means a wait of two to three months, and capacity is being increased to 800 sessions a week. The phone rang almost continuously, so it was replaced by an online form on the website.

The make-up of clients is changing too. Previously there was social selection: those who could afford it came. Now, according to Fialka, people from all walks of life turn to the centre. In the autumn he expects cooperation with other insurers to begin as well.

The Kind Place team now numbers about twenty people. A key figure has become Karolína Štětinová, who returned to Czechia from the US: she has twelve years of practice as a child psychologist and clinical certification. She decided to work not according to the traditional Czech model but in the way she considers right. “We were incredibly lucky, it was the most important moment in the whole story,” Fialka admits.