PR1 - Focus groups experiences Romania and portugal

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.
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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.

Romania

Representants from National Authority for the Protection of Children's Rights and Adoption, Federation of NGOs for Children and the Romanian Social Development Fund took part in the focus groups in Romania.

Most of the participants had a wide experience with the adoption and placement systems in Romania, some of them working or worked in the past, directly with the adoptive families, others being involved in the placement procedures. 

When it comes to the main obstacles in the field, the professionals mentioned:

• The harmonization of the existing legislation
• A system that is too rigid
• Poor communication between actors and lobby on promoting the placement family is needed
• Lack of awareness and informational campaigns for the general public
• The maternal assistance system needs to be reorganized 
• Old mentalities regarding adopting (of the general public)
• Public’s (mis)understanding of the difference between placement and adoption
• The long process of adoption

 
The most notable answers regarding the key elements that build a successful foster care system were:

• The need for periodical staff trainings (updated methodologies and methods of action)
• Professional exchanges for staff members (so they can experience foreign models of activity)
• More focus on local authorities, more investments in local institutions
• The need for awareness campaigns

Portugal

The group of participants presented a mixed target population.
The participants mentioned that the national context does not have a solid knowledge about foster care and, for this reason, the consequent lack of foster families. However, when there is interest on their part, it was reported that the waiting list these families go through is long and often unanswered.
The other area is of professionals who work directly with children and families within the system and therefore the target population are children in foster and residential care as well as foster care families and biological families.

Several obstacles faced by professionals working in the field of foster care, from the point of view of the national context, have been mentioned.

The most common one is work instability, that is, the overload of tasks and the number of cases that are assigned to each professional, making it difficult to follow up cases and associated families.
The difficulty in having resources to select and evaluate families was also mentioned, which suggests a lack of instruments with reliability and validity that are adapted to the Portuguese context.
Lack of human resources and sometimes poor collaboration and communication between teams can cause breakdowns or even damage to cases.
Other important obstacle to refer is the difficulty in the articulation between the different structures of the foster care system, such as justice, social support, health, education. 

Key elements/factors leading to a successful foster care system
 

• "There is no successful intervention if we don't start with an intervention in the biological families, and then think of other measures as measures in a continuum". The importance of an integrated system, in which promotion and protection measures must be linked with foster care.
• A good collaboration and communication between the different services that provide support to the children and the family - the court, the healthcare system, the social services.
• A system with qualified and lifelong trained professionals, using evidence-based practices, both in assessment and intervention, where the different agents are involved (i.e., biological family, foster family, adoptive family, and the children themselves - the importance of the role of these agents in the decision-making process).
• Appropriate working conditions and specific training, followed by supervision of the professionals, since it is a demanding job and requires a lot of involvement from an intervention point of view.
• Effective social measures and a model that trains and monitors families closely, so that it can help them with the new challenges they face.
• Having protocols and specific instruments to conduct visits between the child and biological families.

See the first result