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Eurochild has published two new pieces of analysis to support efforts by the EU and the Ukrainian government to ensure the care of children arriving from Ukraine unaccompanied, separated from their families or who are placed in alternative care.
Building on Eurochild’s DataCare project with UNICEF ECARO, Eurochild is supporting UNICEF’s emergency response work to the invasion of Ukraine to support coordination efforts with the Ukrainian Ministry of Social Policy, the EU and Member…
This articles reflects the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the everyday lives of children and their families in Estonia during lockdown in spring 2020 and 2021. The data corpus is based on diaries compiled by children during the first lockdown in 2020 for a collection at the Estonian Literary Museum, and on a series of semi-structured interviews with children documenting their experiences during lockdown in spring 2021. The study draws on literature from the “new sociology of childhood” and applies Bronfenbrenner’s social ecological model to an analysis of young people’s experiences when…
This article describes the system of training and support of foster carers and adoptive parents in Estonia. Families go through several steps: an assessment, PRIDE pre-training and PRIDE training. The PRIDE (Parent Resources for Information, Development and Education) program has been used for the training of foster families in Estonia since 2000s. Families are trained and assessed through 5 essential competency categories of PRIDE model: protecting and nurturing children; meeting children's developmental needs; supporting children's relationships with their birth families and others. Various…
Abstract
Decisions regarding children’s residential care reorganisation are primarily based on an adult’s perspective of children’s wellbeing and care. While these adults tend to be well-intended and base their decisions off relevant evidence, the children’s perspectives ‐ which reflects their actual lived experiences ‐ is almost never considered. However, since children are experts of their own lives, they should have the right to participate and express their opinion: Their point of view could be of great value in developing residential child care. In this article, we provide SOS…
Abstract
This article is written as part of the FORUM project (FOR Unaccompanied Minors: transfer of knowledge for professionals to increase foster care), an EU funded project which sought to enhance the capacity of professionals to provide quality foster care for unaccompanied migrant children, primarily through the transfer of knowledge. The article aims to contribute to this transfer of knowledge by bringing together literature which is of relevance to professionals developing or enhancing foster care services for unaccompanied migrant children (such as social workers), other…
The Opening Doors 2018 country factsheets provide an update about the progress with the transition from institutional to family- and community-based care (also known as deinstitutionalisation). The new generation of country snapshots covers 12 EU Member States, 2 EU pre-accession and 2 EU neighbouring countries. This factsheet highlights the developments and challenges still ahead in Estonia and offers key recommendations to the EU and the national government to ensure that children are cared for in family-based settings.
ABSTRACT
This article is an attempt to analyse and describe the process of change in child substitute care that has taken place since the re-independence of Estonia in 1991. These changes started with adopting new terms and ideas. However, while international terminology and concepts have been accepted, local conditions affect this acceptance of concepts as well as their practical development. In the present article, the aim is to look at the process of changing discourse in Estonian institutional substitute care. Overall, it was found that, in the reform of substitute care, the way in…
In preparation for the Expert Meeting on Alternative Care and Family Support in the Baltic Sea Region - held in Tallinn, Estonia in May 2015 - the Children’s Unit in cooperation with the Expert Group for Cooperation on Children at Risk conducted a mapping of family support and alternative care services in the Baltic Sea Region Member States. The objective of this mapping was to analyse the situation, assess the achievements since the 2005 Ministerial Forum and to identify relevant opportunities and challenges for the future.
This report documents, assesses, and analyses the state of…
Government representatives, experts and professionals from the Baltic Sea Region including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, Sweden and wider Europe gathered at a two-day expert meeting in Tallinn, Estonia and, together, endorsed a set of recommendations and action plan on alternative care and family support on 6 May 2015. This report provides an overview of the meeting and the presentations and discussions that took place on the topics of regional cooperation on alternative care, promoting quality care for children in the…
This background paper was developed as part of a regional study which gathered relevant data and information on family support and alternative care in the eleven Member States of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS): Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation and Sweden. The aim of this study was to identify progress and challenges in preventing family separation and safeguarding the rights of children in alternative care in the region. This background paper offers a comprehensive and detailed overview of the situation of…