PR1 - focus groups experiences France, Czech republic and Austria

​The first result of the Creating Care project consisted in the creation of a Tool for Understanding Professionals’ Perceptions and Experiences in terms of recruitment and communication with foster families.
​
To properly design it, the partnership has conducted several focus groups to screen professionals' needs in terms of recruitment and communication with foster families as well as their experiences, practices and concerns about the topic of foster care and unaccompanied children in Europe. 

​We invite you to read and delve into some of the findings of these focus groups.

France

The focus group was carried out in one of Afeji’s accommodation and integration facility for unaccompanied minors (DHIMNA). The professionals who testified were social workers, psychologists and heads of educational services.

Obstacles faced working in foster care system

The educational team would like to collaborate with more host families, as there are too few of them. According to them, the population is already strongly solicited for voluntary and charitable actions. They contribute with financial donations but do not move on to the stage of exchange, of contact with the unaccompanied minors. There are also prejudices linked to the public, often generated by incidents which are in the minority, but which provoke mistrust. 

There is a question mark over the reception of unaccompanied minors before the age of 18, because after the age of majority, if the host families no longer want to accompany them, they find themselves on the street and cannot continue their integration. 

The duration of care for unaccompanied minors is generally short (less than a year) and does not allow for the establishment of a solid and lasting relationship for the continuation of the reception after the majority.

Elements/factors that lead a successful foster care system

The right factors to ensure a good network of foster carers are training and supervision of foster carers and remuneration as for other children in the care of child welfare. 
​
Unaccompanied minors do not have the same rights and opportunities to grow up in a safe environment when they have experienced significant trauma before or during their migration.

Czech Republic

In the Czech republic the focus group was carried out with three professionals, while three others were interviewed. 

Obstacles faced working in foster care system

• Amendment of the law - The amendment was inadequately prepared, there was not enough time for public input before it was accepted. the amendment to the law was open to interpretation in a variety of ways and caused confusion in the information given to families by individual professionals. This inconsistency of interpretation made professionals seem unreliable and incompetent in front of families. Currently, the law is again in the process of being amended.
• Lack of institutional cooperation - professionals working with foster families would like to have a team with professionals from OSPOD in order to provide effective support to foster families.
• Training of foster parents - there are some cases when foster parents are not well prepared and also suitable for foster care. There are disagreements between the three entities, the Regional Court, the OSPOD and the professionals, when one entity does not recommend a candidate as a foster parent, but nevertheless the other entity approves him/her.
• Teachers, judges, state office workers would need better education to learn, what is important for children in critical situations, how to handle children with hidden traumas, how to speed up the process of placing children in foster care (to minimize the time in institutional care). In this the application could help – to provide information on how to work with children after traumas, or after children abuse.

Elements/factors that lead a successful foster care system

• ​Cooperation of all stakeholders and experts
• Adequate financial evaluation of foster care families
• Consistent and clear legislative and working methodology
• Good preparation and selection of foster families
• Regular therapeutic care for children to heal their trauma and help them cope with life situations.
• Increase awareness and education in society about foster care, remove the stigma of being a foster child. Children from foster families often do not want to talk about their background because they are ashamed of it or because it is something different and unusual among their peers.
• Preparation training of both long-term non-relative foster parents and kinship foster parents. The process of placing a child in kinship foster care is accelerated in order to keep the child in residential care for as short a time as possible, but therefore it leaves insufficient time to prepare and train kinship foster parents. 

Austria

In Tyrol and Carinthia, a total of 15 individual interviews were conducted with professionals working in different institutions in the field of "foster care". It proved to be difficult to bring professionals together to conduct focus group interviews. Since most of the interviews were conducted with professionals working with refugee minor children and adolescents in residential care and supported living communities, we focus on this specific area in the evaluation and analysis of the interviews. Moreover, the topic of "refugee minors" is discussed rather marginally in the foster care system, although the situation of these children is very precarious and critical. Moreover, hardly any family
declares itself willing to take in refugee minor children, which leads to the fact that these children have to spend whole periods of time in homes, where individual care and support is neither possible nor provided for.

Obstacles professionals in the foster care system and foster parents and children face

There are significant differences in the treatment of unaccompanied minor refugee children/youth whose parents do not live in Austria or are unknown. Refugee children and youth are often disadvantaged by the system. The shelters and assisted living communities often have much less money available. In addition, these care facilities are inadequately equipped-unlike residential communities that house local children.

Refugees do not have parents on site and are often at the mercy of caregivers and also the system in the asylum system. Opportunities for caregivers and professionals working with refugee children are also very limited, he said. Foster families for the children in question with refugee biographies are hard to find.

Many do not know what they are getting into. Foster families are in constant contact with the Office of the Child and Youth Advocate and the birth parents (if they live in Austria). Foster families live in constant fear that the children they have become accustomed to will be taken away from them at any time. Placement in homes/residential communities or in foster families is only temporary for native children, they say. The children also suffer from being shuffled back and forth again and again. Many of them would have experienced violence and abuse.

With refugee children, it is a problem if the foster parents are not familiar with the legal conditions. Everything is much more complicated. There is also a lot of bureaucracy. You always have to act in a way that has a positive impact on the lives of the children involved. In addition, many children and young people are severely traumatized, and trauma work is not really possible because of the legal framework.

Secondly, the children who have fled must first learn the language and familiarize themselves with all the realities of the host country. Third, it makes little sense to do sufficient trauma work if the children are in shelters for quite some time and have little opportunity to be taken in by foster parents. Foster parents would almost have to undergo their own complex training and also gain practical experience before taking in such refugee children. And that is often too complicated for many foster parents.

Key elements/factors leading a successful foster care system

The federal states of Tyrol and Carinthia, where the expert interviews were conducted, offer specific preparatory courses for foster parents. However, this was apparently not the case in all federal provinces and could be expanded. It would also make sense to tailor such courses to the conditions and life realities of the individual children. A child with an impairment has very different needs and interests than an abused or refugee child. Refugee minors would need their own training simply because of their history.

Networking meetings or help planning meetings are also enormously important. It is important that all parties involved (child and youth welfare workers, foster parents and, if applicable, birth parents) value each other. However, this is not always the case.

In care facilities that have taken in foster children, it would be good if conditions improved significantly. Especially in facilities that have taken in children who have grown up in Austria, the conditions for the care staff are a pure catastrophe (e.g. 24-hour duty without counting the night as working time, a lot of overtime, poor pay, travel distances that are far too long, etc.). In addition, the homes are located far too far away and in very remote areas.

Learn more about the first result