According to the latest Ombudsperson for Children’s Research on children and young people without adequate parental care … on December 31, 2022, there were 818 children in institutions, of which 568 were in residential care and 250 in organized housing, which is an increase of 12 children when compared to 2021. This increase would be even greater, given the numerous inquiries from the Social Welfare Centers sent to institutions where admission of children is requested if their capacities were not filled. Furthermore, the competent ministry’s Annual Statistical Report for 2021, states that 1,980 children were placed in foster families on December 31, 2021, which amounts to 2,798 children. Such a large number of children who cannot live in their own families shows that alternative care for children and young cannot be regarded separately from parenting, which represents the core of family relationships. Parents are the biological and legal guardians of the child and have a responsibility and role in its upbringing and care. If they neglect this role, it can have serious consequences on the physical, emotional, and mental health of a child. If social services’ measures to provide help and support for the child and family are not effective, the child will be removed from the harmful surroundings and then placed in some form of alternative care, including foster care.
How to define parenting?
How to raise a child or more precisely, how to raise one correctly? And what does right mean? Does it depend, for example, on nationality, tradition, the continent or country in which we live, or are there strong universal values that apply to parenting, regardless of the aforementioned differences, which scientists dealing with child development call parenting ethnotheories? One of the scientists who has been researching the phenomenon of parenting for decades is Sara Harkess from the University of Connecticut, who has studied parenting in different societies and concluded that correct upbringing is based on deeply socially and generationally instilled beliefs. Therefore, we can say that we have adopted most of our assumptions about parenting from our parents which were instilled in us through upbringing. However, the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child, which entered into force on September 2, 1990, encompasses all cultures and all societies and defines the key rights of the child that must be respected universally, for example, the right to live and to physical and spiritual development, the right to education, health, protection from violence, expression of opinion in all matters that concern them, the right to a family, play and free time, identity, protection from work and protection in war conflicts. Therefore, one of the fundamental rights is the right to a family, which includes protection against separation from parents against their and the child’s will, meaning that justified and valid reasons for the separation should exist. And even then, the child has the right to maintain family ties with parents and relatives because these are important for their identity and sense of belonging.
Ljiljana Ban, a social worker with twenty years of experience with young people from alternative care, also agrees that parenthood represents the starting point. After finishing her studies, she worked with civil society organizations in Croatia, and abroad. For the first ten years, she worked on preventive programs that included working with children and parents on promoting children’s rights, preventing violence, addiction, and the like. Subsequently, a decade of professional work with young people, primarily those in alternative care, brought her in cooperation with the Dutch organization Stichting Kinderperspectief, with whom she has been working recently, as the executive editor of the specialist magazine for alternative care, Alternativni MOD/ DOM (op. prev. Alternative MODE/ HOME).
When we think about ourselves and our identity, that is, what defines us, the starting point is our biological family, says Ljiljana Ban. We all recognize patterns of behavior that we picked up from our parents. As we grow older, we increasingly remember some events from our parents’ home that are etched in our memory, some sentences that were said, and a lot more of what was not said, that had a significant impact on our value system, beliefs, self-awareness, and security. Especially powerful are the painful memories, even from the earliest childhood when parents were not even aware that the child was absorbing everything, even though they could not speak yet. Thus, parents overlook that the child is present in the same room and absorbs energy, words, and behavior, thinking it will not affect the child because they behave well towards them. But the child sees, hears, and feels, and what is even worse is that they cannot express everything that happens inside them. The role of parents in early development can also be observed through the characteristics of brothers or sisters within the same family. As these are children who were born to them over a different period during which, consciously or unconsciously, they changed, there are still visible differences in the development and upbringing of the siblings. A common sentence used to describe siblings goes: ‘Having the same parents, but being so different’. Even parents will sometimes say that their children are so different while being raised in the same manner, but the fact is they weren’t. The parents are not the same, they are older, they have changed, the surroundings have changed, and all that has an impact. The family has its dynamics which is influenced by the surroundings and all its members, just as the family has a reciprocal effect on all its members and the surrounding community, Ban pointed out.
Does our biological ability to have children represent a sufficient competence for parenting?
Considering that almost nothing is taught about reproductive rights and ‘family planning’ through the educational system, in the family and wider social surroundings, it turns out that this is a marginal segment of society and not one of the most significant for its development. Before we bring children into the world, are we aware of our responsibility to provide them with everything needed for healthy and proper growth and development, from quality and nutritionally essential food, and an adequate spatial environment to an emotionally stable and safe community? Maybe we didn’t have it ourselves, but that doesn’t excuse us from not creating it and providing it for our children. In any case, it is necessary to be informed about all the emotional and mental challenges that, in addition to the joys, parenthood brings and to see if we are emotionally, physically, mentally, and financially ready for this role. We should approach this systematically and create an environment for children and young in which they can develop skills and values necessary for social prosperity, such as ethics and morality, creativity, love of learning, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence. And yet, in a large number of cases, the environment in which the children find themselves is exactly the opposite, and parental care is absent to such an extent that there is a threat to the child’s health and life, physical or sexual abuse included.
No child was taken away without considerable, serious, and justified reasons, I want to emphasize that, Ban points out, adding that, today an assumption still exists that social workers go around and take children from their parents, although to a much lesser extent. In my first ten years as a social worker, I often worked with children at school and when I introduced myself, they would immediately tell me: ‘You are the one taking children away’. When there are serious concerns for the child’s well-being, social services take measures such as temporarily removing the child from the family because their stay represents an immediate danger to their welfare.
The complaints of parents to the Social Welfare Centers whose right to parenting is temporarily limited also show that they often do not see the justification of such a procedure, i.e. that they justify their behavior towards the child or children very well to themselves. Those reports emphasize their dissatisfaction with the choice of institution where the children are placed, with a foster family or a relative to whom the day-to-day care of the child or children is entrusted. They also state that their children were “taken away” and that they are not aware of the reasons for their separation. The Office of the Ombudsperson for Children has dealt with almost all such reports and established, as it states in its Report, that in all cases it can be undoubtedly concluded that the Social Welfare Centers made an objective assessment of the threat to the child’s psychophysical and social development, which is why it was necessary to remove them from the biological family. Social Welfare Centers consider the list of developmental risks when implementing measures to protect the rights and well-being of the child.
Challenges to children’s rights
Poverty is still one of the key risks in realizing children’s rights, and securing adequate housing is a serious problem for many parents, especially those of Roma nationality. Roma families very often display all the parameters for the greatest exposure to the risk of poverty, such as low employment, lower level of education, larger number of children, and living in segregated settlements. According to the results of the Base Data Survey conducted by the Office for Human Rights and the Rights of National Minorities, over 92 percent of Roma families live below the poverty risk threshold. In 48 percent of Roma households, a family member went to bed hungry at least once a month. The largest share of Roma houses is in poor or dilapidated condition. Roughly two-thirds of households have moisture problems, about 42 percent have rotten window panes, and one-third do not have enough sunlight. More than half of Roma households do not have a toilet, and every other household lacks a shower or bathtub in their living quarters. As many as 73 percent of households are not connected to the sewage system, 43 percent do not have piped water, 20 percent do not have a kitchen, and 11 percent lack electricity.
Apart from poverty, which represents a discriminatory factor, the different ethnicity, culture, and language of Roma children represent potential causes for mockery, belittling, and isolation, as well as unequal access to health care and education. As far as discrimination is concerned, the results of the Survey on attitudes and level of awareness of discrimination and forms of discrimination presented by the Ombudsman at the beginning of 2023 show that 27.8 percent of participants stated that they had been discriminated against at least once, which is the largest increase in the fourteen years since the research has been conducted. And while prejudices against asylum seekers and members of the LGBTQ communities in Croatia have decreased, discrimination against the Roma, towards whom the greatest social distance is expressed, is on the rise.
Furthermore, among the problems that challenge children’s right to a healthy and happy life is certainly insufficient support for mental health, which manifests itself, for example, in emotional neglect and the lack of a stimulating, safe, and stable environment. Therefore, it is not surprising that most 2022 reports were related to the challenges of children’s rights in Roma families. They constitute the most vulnerable group of children who, in addition to being excluded from their social surroundings, also display a real risk of self-exclusion due to a sense of vulnerability. When, therefore, the Social Welfare Centers notice that some of the aforementioned risks are present in the child’s life constantly and that that situation does not improve, but instead a persistent threat to the child’s right to life and development exists, they should separate the child from the family and place them in a foster family or in a home where they will be provided with alternative care. A new problem arises, which is the lack of accommodation capacity that social centers are regularly faced with, both in homes and in foster families, so it happens that they can not propose the child’s separation at all. Further monitoring of the family situation and the child’s life is left to the individual professional workers who, due to insufficient numbers, are forced to focus on urgent cases.
According to my knowledge, the system of placement in alternative care in Croatia is so overcrowded that children cannot be separated from their families because there is nowhere to place them. This raises a serious question of what will happen tomorrow to those children who remain in conditions they should not be in, says Ban. Growing up is when the foundations for a responsible and functioning future adult are created when the basics of social communication are established, and in this way, there are no conditions for a healthy foundation. Here we come to the fact that I have often heard in practice, which is that no one, or hardly anyone, wants a Roma child. But Croatia is not an isolated case, the same happens in other EU countries, and this is what Ban is talking about: Two years ago, as a representative of the organization FICE Croatia – Centre for Supporting Communities, Professionals, Families, Youth and Children for Better Life Quality, I collaborated intensively with Eurochild, a network of organizations and individuals working with children and for children in Europe. I worked on the “Opening Doors” campaign, which prioritized family adoption and emphasized deinstitutionalizing placement of children. At regular meetings with colleagues from 16 European countries in Brussels, there was an exchange of knowledge and experience, and based on the analysis of current research data, various advocacy campaigns and actions were prepared for individual countries, which included the European Parliament. Some of the thematic sessions dealt with the overrepresentation of Roma children in alternative care, as most European colleagues highlighted this situation in their countries as well. What this means is that compared to the majority population, the percentage of children from the Roma population in alternative care is significantly higher, so the question was raised by what key Roma children are separated from their families and whether these separations are always justified. There was a suspicion that the majority population perceived the different ways of life of Roma families as inappropriate and their living conditions inadequate. It was suggested that each situation should be assessed objectively because inadequacy should not be defined on the basis that the conditions are not the same as those of the majority population or what the majority population thinks they should be. When we add prejudices against the Roma, which are on the rise, and all the aforementioned risks faced by Roma children, of course, this affects fostering and adoption.
Let us go back to the family, to parenting where something went wrong, which affects the child’s well-being, both during the parents’ life together, and, unfortunately, in a large number of cases after the divorce when the parents continue to file complaints against each other regarding their actions towards the child, and then to child support. In 2022, reports of violations of children’s rights in the family continued to be represented in large numbers, and according to the Ombudsperson for Children’s Research, there were 420 cases. Of these, 302 reports refer to the child’s right to live in a family and to both parents and 24 to child support.
What can be noticed is insufficiently defined inter-institutional cooperation on preventing and solving individual, less complex cases, as well as the insufficient capacity of experts to work with (biological) families. For more permanent and effective changes, according to Ban, it is necessary to work continuously with all stakeholders of these processes. Most often, it happens that the child is separated from the family, is placed in a foster family or children’s home, and sometimes in a reform school, and thus the whole problem seems to be solved. As if the child was the problem, not the family in which they were born and raised. Suddenly, no one deals with that family anymore, leaving it alone with all its problems. Often, new children are born in that family and the agony continues, Ban explains and adds: There are also situations where children, when they reach a certain age or finish school have to leave the foster family or home, are returned to their biological family, to the place from which they were separated, for example, 15 years ago, and the situation is often even worse than then, and for many, unfortunately, this is the only option.
Challenges facing the family today
The list of challenges that every family faces today is regularly filled with new concerns that seriously threaten its role as a social nucleus where children are taught communication and other social skills, cooperation, and empathy, which ultimately affects the entire community. It is increasingly difficult to establish a balance between family and work, parental and professional obligations. Insecure jobs, rising living costs, and other financial pressures contribute to increasing economic challenges. The digital age confronts us with an upbringing in which children have access to a wide variety of content that is mostly inappropriate for their age and mental development. Parents themselves do not know how to manage their children’s behavior online and teach them to recognize the dangers that lurk, which they cannot identify, for example, due to a lack of life experience. There are more and more people, including parents, with mental health problems, such as stress, anxiety, and depression, which affect the functioning of the family as a whole. The challenges of one’s aging process, as well as those associated with caring for older family members, providing support for children in rapidly changing educational surroundings, and many other challenges require form policymakers and institutions to play a more significant role in creating procedures and support systems that could be adapted to modern needs of the family to solve those challenges more effectively.
In this context, it is necessary to regularly consider the poverty reduction strategy, to continuously work on a real increase in gender equality, to develop a system for ensuring adequate housing for families with children at risk of poverty, and to persist in the protection of all human rights, as well as to learn to identify them from an early school age.
Raising children in the described conditions is a demanding process, although, with love, support, and continuous hard work, parents can provide their children with the opportunity for a happy and successful life despite the limitations. Experts point out and repeat over and over that it has been scientifically proven that every human being needs at least one person on whom they can count when their heart “breaks” either because of happiness or because of sadness, to have someone of our own. Every child would like that person to be their parent, says Ban. Therefore, we should all strive to develop parenthood as a relationship based on mutual love, understanding, and trust.
The publication of this text was supported by the Electronic Media Agency as part of the program to encourage journalistic excellence
