Leaving the alternative care system for a child means losing support and a social network that includes people and measures they could rely on. The transition to an independent life is a process that every young person faces, but the difference is that most young people have a family behind them and their parent’s home as a safe harbor. During this process, they receive support, which is extremely important, especially at the beginning of their independence.
Young people who have found themselves in a situation of leaving the alternative care system say: The only thing worse than ending up in a home is leaving it, recounts Ljiljana Ban, a social worker who currently works with young people who are in the process of leaving the system of alternative care or have recently left the system. Young people often say they have faced those moments, unaware of what will happen tomorrow. Some pretend it won’t happen and deny the possibility until the moment of leaving because it’s too hard for them to face the uncertainty and the anxiety it causes them. Leaving home and not knowing where you’re going and what you will do with yourself is not easy. That moment when they realize that they are completely alone is too strong a blow for some, and some end up hospitalized due to psychological problems. The spectrum of different situations includes those who, for instance, have a positive relationship with educators and can approach them for discussion. However, they acknowledge that it’s challenging because they see it as admitting they can’t manage independently and have failed. They often don’t even ask for what they are entitled to, such as social assistance, because that would mean returning to the social welfare center, the system they wanted to leave for so long. Some, in agreement with the foster parents, stay a little longer with the foster family, extending their stay by a month and then by another month. This is not a solution because neither the child nor the foster family receive financial compensation anymore. There is also the pressure of the social welfare center that needs to accommodate a new child. I must also mention those situations when children reach a certain age or finish school and have to leave the foster family or home and, in the absence of other options, return to their biological family, i.e. to the same place they were forced to leave, for example, 15 year before, where the situation they encounter is often even worse than it was. Unfortunately, there are many for whom this is the only option, says Ban.
Actual problems related to leaving the home or foster family, in addition to a strong feeling of loneliness and lack of emotional support, are represented by the inability to meet basic economic needs, such as difficulties in finding a job or underpayment at work. The lack of ability to register a place of residence, lack of knowledge about labor rights and workplace protections, difficulty in renting an apartment and accessing quality, healthy food, and the need for additional social support, such as enrollment in art or dance workshops, language courses, obtaining a driver’s license, and attending cinemas or theaters, should all be highlighted.
According to the new 2023 Social Welfare Act the deadline for leaving the system of alternative care has been extended, so young people can remain in the system until the age of 26, provided there are legal assumptions, i.e. that they are studying or have some health problems. There is also a certain number of housing units in individual homes, which depends on the local self-governments, as these are usually their apartments, where several young people aged 17 to 21 years can live together. In this way, they learn to function independently. They are alone during the day. They have certain obligations and receive money to cover all their expenses. The group has an educator who visits it regularly and helps the members learn the skills necessary for complete independence. However, this solution does not apply to all young people, Ban explains.
In workshops for young people, often conducted as part of projects within the ERASMUS program, UNICEF initiatives, or other European Commission programs, youth discuss issues related to leaving alternative care systems and the recurring challenges they face. They share their authentic life experiences which are mostly not easy, again and again hoping it will result in real change, but their concerns seem to remain mere ink on paper.
Children’s participation is underrepresented
Children’s participation, as their right to express their opinion on topics that affect their lives and participate in making important decisions, which topics and decisions related to alternative care certainly are, is under-represented. Many scientists and experts have dealt with the issue of children’s participation, including Stephenson, Gourley, and Miles, who in 2004 published a publication on children’s participation. Their research findings indicated that all information about children, provided by adults, is flawed, to say the least, because adults don’t think about relationships, priorities, and life, in general, the way a child does. Therefore, decisions made by adults without listening to children and their perspectives can lead to decisions that harm children. Children describe weak or non-existent participation in the alternative care process as a feeling of helplessness. When, for example, they talk about problems in the biological family from which they were separated, in a large number of cases they state that they do not know what was the cause, that is, they can notice certain forms of behavior, but cannot connect them to a specific cause. They talk about placement in a foster family with very few details, very rationally, reducing it to “and then we came to that family”. The difficulty with which they talk about these situations even after many years have passed or the tears that come to their eyes when they describe their memories show that these situations were not discussed with them, that they did not have adequate professional help, and that in a large number of cases foster families avoided this topic or reduced it to repeating how difficult and terrible it was for the children in their parents’ home. In the whole process, the children did not actively take part.
How they experience foster care and the new family in which they are placed is also not sufficiently communicated with the children, which greatly hinders the creation of quality relationships in the new family. Some said that they thought it was temporary accommodation and were just waiting to leave, others felt under pressure because the foster parents had to feed, clothe, and school them. Almost all stated that they felt they had to reshape their behavior because they should be grateful that someone took them in as if children were separated from biological families because of their guilt. They also mention how countless times they had the feeling that they were just an obligation for everyone, social workers and foster parents.
Recommendations
Children have their views on each segment of the adoption process and foster care and, most importantly, recommendations on what could and should be arranged differently.
Thus, within the framework of the UNICEF project “What do children tell us about foster care?”, children and young gave a whole series of recommendations, including those related to the work of social welfare centers. Concerning foster parents, they recommend that social welfare centers check foster parents more often and establish a higher level of control, which would prevent new transfers of children from one foster family to another due to, for example, neglect or abuse. Concerning children, they recommend greater participation of children, at least in terms of talking about the child’s feelings and thoughts during the procedure, further slowing down the adoption process in terms of preparing children for separation and getting to know the foster parents better in advance and achieving a continuous relationship with the foster child during the foster care period.
Children’s participation generally lags at the social level. I think that the participation of children in our society is very low, and when it comes to alternative care it is even more pronounced because it concerns key life issues. It seems to me that the very concept of participation is still not understood, and related to that is the problem of an insufficiently developed communication culture. So when young people do manage to express their needs, decision-makers often do not deem it important enough to respond. The problem was beautifully described by my colleague, who herself lived in alternative care, and today is an educator in Ireland, saying that there is nothing more disheartening for a young person than to speak up and share their story, only for nothing to change. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens systematically at different levels with the messages of children and young people, says Ban. The last few years of her work with young people who have experienced living in alternative care brought some great and concrete ideas and achievable proposals of what can be done and improved, which were then forwarded to institutions at the national and European levels, respectively.
In 2016, we received the award for the best Erasmus project, and in Vienna, as part of the FICE congress, which brought together a group of 53 young people from different countries, we worked on recommendations that continued to spread through expert meetings in countries years later, says Ban. We have summarized them in 10 points, as follows: every user of care should have equal rights, opportunities, and access to social benefits and be adequately informed about it; each user should be involved in creating their plan for leaving the alternative care system, in which they will list the skills and tools they need for its implementation; college application should be accompanied by adequate assistance measures in the form of scholarships, and employment should require professional counseling with people who would help in raising awareness and improving the potential of each individual; each user should have free health insurance and a link with at least one person they can rely on; better preparation for leaving alternative care is essential, including basic skills such as maintaining a daily routine, paying bills, and cooking. Additionally, guidance on securing housing and the right to a mentor after leaving care, who provides practical and emotional support for a period, is crucial
As part of the LeaveCare-LiveLife project in 2019, young people from different forms of alternative care all over Croatia, including many young people of Roma nationality, brought Recommendations and presented them at an expert meeting held in the Little House of Children’s Rights. It was attended by representatives of various institutions, the legal profession, social welfare centers, SOS Children’s Village, UNICEF, and others. Experts from Great Britain, Ireland, and the Netherlands joined via video call to present their models of participatory work with young people from the alternative care system. Great Britain, for example, presented an application that is already in use and is intended for children placed in a foster family so that they can use it to inform the competent social worker how they are and what is happening to them. Our Recommendations presented at this meeting highlighted the following needs: providing timely and complete information; ensuring savings for everyone during their stay in alternative care so that they have financial security upon leaving; ensuring conditions and opportunities for meetings and exchange of experience and information between young people who have left or are leaving alternative care; providing education on life skills, such as financial literacy, cooking, and the like, before leaving alternative care; providing a mentor for one year period before leaving and two years after leaving; providing education, support, and assistance to foster parents and professionals who work with young people in alternative care; informing the public to break down prejudices about young people in alternative care; and ensuring one person with whom each fostered young person could talk once a week, says Ban. We sent them to many addresses, including the addresses of competent institutions and services, and nothing happened or changed. The young people ask me what happened to all the conclusions we worked on and the Recommendations, and I have to tell them that I sent hundreds of e-mails and I didn’t even get the answer ‘we are not interested’.
Together with young people from Italy, Ireland, Great Britain, and Romania, our youth groups created another joint recommendation presented at the European Parliament in Brussels in 2020 named the Recommendation DEF, but it led to no real changes.
Increasing participation remains, therefore, only a declaratory demand and therefore it is not surprising that such a message demotivates young people in their further work. They say that they don’t have time to wait for years for all those involved in the process to sit down, agree, and respond to their clear recommendations based on experience and start applying them in practice: We can’t wait for them to form and dissolve six working groups, to change authorities in institutions, define guidelines and new priorities and decide to hire enough social workers because we need housing and food today, and young people who leave the system every day, like us, will continue to be left to fend for themselves and to the streets.
The publication of this text was supported by the Electronic Media Agency as part of the program to encourage journalistic excellence
