According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, children should grow up in a family environment for the full and harmonious development of their personalities. Ideally, they would be raised by their birth parents. However, this is not always safe. In such cases, governments are required to step in and provide children with special protection and assistance and, if necessary, place them elsewhere.
Alternative care must protect, not harm, children
During a recent public hearing on the protection and promotion of the rights of children placed in alternative care, the European Parliament (EP) Coordinator on Children’s Rights, Ewa Kopacz, drew attention to the alternative care situation in the EU: “Children are neglected, they suffer further trauma, they are marginalised… broken by a system that was set up and created to protect them”.
The risks and adverse long-term effects are even higher for children placed in residential care settings, especially younger children. Notwithstanding, numbers keep rising. In 2023, for instance, 48.7% of children in out-of-home care in Finland were placed in residential care, a figure that has steadily increased each year since 2018. The situation is just as critical in Spain, though the national government launched an ambitious deinstitutionalisation strategy in June last year.
Deinstitutionalisation goes beyond discontinuing residential care
Deinstitutionalisation is not simply about shutting down residential care facilities. The whole child protection system must be rewired so that it provides families with the comprehensive, tailor-made support they need to keep their children safe and thriving, and society with the skills and knowledge required to care for these children if needed.
However, in today’s Europe, 32% of social services professionals report a total shortage of temporary placements and 29% report a total lack of long-term placements, according to a 2024 questionnaire by the European Social Network (ESN). To address this, there must be better incentives and support for both kinship and foster carers, accompanied by greater investment in training, recruiting, and retaining professionals working in child protection.
Having a skilled, competent, and adequately resourced child protection workforce would address some of the 2024 recommendations put forward by young people themselves through the European Network of Young Advisors, part of the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children. While recognising that sometimes residential care may be inevitable, they called on decision-makers to prioritise placing children in family-like environments, streamline processes, and ensure that placements are safe and in children’s best interests. They also stressed that children’s opinions should be considered, according to their age and development.
Collecting and comparing facts allows for informed decision-making
At the EP hearing, SOS Children’s Villages International underscored how the lack of harmonised quality standards for alternative care across EU Member States results in uneven protection and support. To achieve quality, we must start with proper data collection and analysis. In Europe, however, data on child protection is lacking, and the available data is fragmented and does not allow for cross-national comparisons.
Not having accurate and comprehensive statistics further increases the risk for children, especially those in residential care. This is why ESN is committed to continuing its work on the European Social Services Index (SSI). Launched in 2023, the SSI gathers national data about EU Member States' social services legislation, expenditure, and coverage, focusing on a range of services including child protection.
Our new findings will be available in the autumn and will provide a snapshot of the number of open cases within each country’s child protection system, the number of children placed in alternative care, as well as the average waiting time from the moment a decision is made to place a child in long-term alternative care to finding a suitable long-term placement. It will also explore whether there have been any recent reforms regarding child protection in each country.
ESN’s analysis has expanded throughout the years, covering 10 EU Member States in 2023, 13 in 2024, and 17 anticipated this year. Our hope is that these efforts will inform decision-makers at both European and national levels about the state of affairs of social services across Europe, so that they can jointly and strategically take action so that children and young people can indeed live “in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding”.
