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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…
Executive Summary
Across Europe hundreds of thousands of children are growing up in institutional care. The consequences are devastating for children, devastating for families and ultimately, devastating for society as a whole.
The Opening Doors for Europe’s Children Campaign seeks to improve the quality of life of children and young people in, at risk of entering, or leaving institutional care across Europe by promoting the transition from institutional to family-based care, also called deinstitutionalisation (DI). Through coordinated advocacy at national and EU level…
This joint memo was issued by a group of European organizations to clearly state their belief that the draft language on community living in the proposed EU Structural Funds Regulations should be amended to enhance the effect and to better advance the rights of children, persons with disabilities, and older people. The memo highlights the need to clarify and improve the text, and why this is necessary in order to uphold the international legal obligations of the EU to promote the right to community living, particularly for children, persons with disabilities, and older people.
Many European countries have high rates of young children in institutions, where the physical care of the child predominates, with social/emotional needs a secondary concern. Institutional care is a very poor substitute for positive family care, increasing the risk of development delay, attachment difficulties, neural growth dysfunction and mental health disorders. This article provides an update on a series of projects that have highlighted this issue in Europe, arguing that babies and small children aged less than 3 years old, with or without disability, should not be placed in residential…
The European Declaration on the Health of Children and Young People with Intellectual Disabilities and their Families: Better Heath, Better Lives outlines ten priorities for action aimed at ensuring healthy and full lives for these children and their families. The purpose of this paper is to provide background information and offer pragmatic steps in relation to priority no. 3: “Transfer care from institutions to the community”. The paper was produced in preparation for the conference in Bucharest, Romania 26-27 November, 2010.
The paper includes a statement on the impact of…
In this report an attempt is made to address the issues that were defined in the terms of reference of the Working Group on Children at Risk and in Care.
The report starts with a discussion on the effect of institutionalisation on children and society at large. This is followed by an overview of the situation in Europe in terms of placement of children in residential care. Three distinct categories are identified: states with high rate of child residential care coupled with large institutions (Central and Eastern Europe); states with low rate of residential care and large institutions (…