Children in Institutions

SOS Children’s Villages has published the report on the situation of young people ageing out of care in Europe and Central Asia. The report consists of 13 country reviews, from Albania, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Poland, the Russian Federation, and Uzbekistan. 

"2010 AiBi. Report on Child Abandonment: an Emergency – Life After Institutional Care” is the third report released from AiBi. after the first two issued in 2007 and 2008 on respectively child abandonment and the social protection systems of the out-of-family children in five E.U. countries. The report is one of the two concrete outputs (results) of the E.U. co-financed project named Life After Institutional Care which Ai.Bi. has carried out over the last two years in Italy, France, Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia to help identify effective social policies for the successful social inclusion of out-of-family youths.

New law introduced in Bulgaria allows children who have spent more than six months without their parents taking them back, can be put up for adoption without the parents' approval. The law was passed with an aim to reduce the number of children growing up in institutions. Another obstacle for increasing adoption, apart form biological parents unwillingness to give up their parental rights, are prejudice against Roma minority. Some prospective parents suspect them of abandoning children at a young age only to claim them back when they are old enough to earn money.

This online resource has been created to aid child care practitioners and policy makers in planning and providing better care for children - including preventing unnecessary family separation and supporting families and communities to develop better care alternatives when separation is inevitable. The documents included in the toolkit present good practices and have been chosen for their global relevance and practical application.