In Estonia, the collapse of Soviet socialism and the building of democratic society have been accompanied by several new social phenomena, including unemployment and poverty, that have had a negative impact on the overall welfare of families. The legacy of distrust of the state from the Soviet era and economic hardship in the period of transformation have encouraged people to look for their own solutions to avoid social exclusion. The focus in this article is the traditional provider of support – the family self-help network – as a guarantee against social deprivation. A description of the characteristics and main activities of these informal networks is followed by a review of the expectations that families have of state social policy and constraints on policy intervention. Consideration is given to the strategies needed to enable passive members of informal networks to become active participants in social dialogue, drawing on interviews conducted for the IPROSEC project1 .