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This statement from Lumos outlines the organization's recommendations to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development regarding the institutionalization of children. The statement includes some background information on the harmful effects of institutionalization on children and highlights the existing "commitment to ending the institutionalisation of children inside the EU." The statement includes three recommendations from Lumos:
1. Ensure that the EBRD does not fund institutions for children
2. Include children in institutions as a target group for the EBRD’s…
Introduction
Children placed in institutional care are deprived of their fundamental right to living in a family environment. The Romanian state would greatly improve their situation, if it took care of preventing the separation of children from their family, instead of focusing on the current model - placing in care about 63,000 children, while hundreds of thousands of them still live in inhumane conditions. These are the ones that specialised public authorities pretend they do not see, because they lack the capacity for legislative framework design to prevent the separation of…
These recommendations have been developed by the Opening Doors for Europe’s Children campaign and are based on the work of the campaign since 2016, calling for a stronger commitment to maintain, strengthen and expand the use of EU funds for deinstitutionalisation reforms in Europe. "As a coalition of 124 civil society organisations working to improve the lives of vulnerable families and children in 16 European countries," says the report, "we call on the European Parliament and the Council of the EU to take forward the renewed commitment of the European Commission, as reflected in EC’s…
Executive Summary
European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) 2014—2020, along with policy innovations by the European Union, have paved the way in several Member States to make progress in reforming the child protection systems towards strengthening families and ensuring alternative family- and community-based care for children. However, not all EU Member States have benefited equally from the initiatives and many countries outside the EU did not get the opportunity to transform their child protection systems through EU funding instruments.
Across Europe, thousands of our youngest…
This report from Opening Doors for Europe's Children presents recommendations to the EU on how best to include deinstitutionalization and children's care reforms as a part of the next multiannual financial framework. "The negotiations for the next Multiannual Financial Framework present a unique opportunity for the EU to champion the transition from institutional to family and communitybased care as a human rights cause," states the report.
The EU has the chance and means to give millions of children within and beyond its borders access to a better life – no longer…
According to this report from Lumos, in 2010 there were more than 6,700 children living in institutions in Bulgaria. This rate was higher than the international average. In 2009, 3,000 children in Bulgaria were admitted into institutions. Lumos reports that conditions were particularly poor in disability institutions and mortality rates were unusually high.
In 2010 Bulgaria launched many reforms in order to lower the number of children entering and living in institutions. The reforms involved strengthening social services, foster care development programs, and…
This recent study by UNICEF in Armenia costed different types of residential care and community based services in order to forecast the financial implication of the Government of Armenia’s reform policies which emphasize deinstitutionalization and transition to community based forms of care. The study shows that the reallocation of children into family care does not necessarily lead to the creation of an additional burden on the state budget. On the contrary, depending on the policy chosen, the savings can be quite tangible, even if the reform costs include the provision of jobs to excessive…
WHAT: This folder contains guidance and planning and assessment tools to implement reform of national social care financing from institutionalized care to a family and community-based framework.
- Redirecting Resources to Community Based Services: A Concept Paper: A comparative analysis of social care financing systems in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union, with guidance on transitioning to family based care.
- Executive Summary of the above concept paper
- Introduction to the toolkit…
This report was produced by the UK-based independent think tank, Demos. An excerpt of the executive summary is found below:
In media debate and policy discussions the care system is frequently described as failing. This negative view of care in England and Wales is closely related to how it is evaluated and the way that data on young people’s outcomes is misinterpreted – both of which tell a misleading story about its impact. In reality, there is a dissonance between the evidence on the impact of care, and the public perception of the system. Currently, this stigmatisation of the care…
This paper examines and compares the cost of maintaining and caring for a child in an internat with the cost of providing social support services to a child living in the community. It examines residential institutions and community services and comments upon their respective impacts upon and outcomes for children. The paper illustrates that residential care provides poor outcomes for children, such as poor psychosocial development and educational under achievement. It also demonstrates that the management of residential care is of its nature self serving and undermining of the…