For millions of children across the world, life without their parents is a daunting situation. Children without parental care are often exposed to poverty and discrimination, and are more vulnerable to abuse and neglect. Today, the number of children without parental care is still growing, and their deteriorating living conditions and the lack of support are pressing issues of global concern.
SOS Children's Villages is committed to ensure that children all over the world who are left without the care of their parents receive the quality care they are entitled to and has therefore teamed up with other NGOs in two international processes aimed at improving their situation: the drafting of United Nations guidelines on the protection of children without parental care, and the compilation and rollout of the "Quality4Children Standards on Out-of-Home Child Care in Europe" .
SOS Children's Villages brings its expertise to an international process for children without parental care
The growing number of children without parental care, their deteriorating living conditions and the lack of support extended to them are issues of global concern. Until now there have been no internationally-agreed upon standards on the protection and care of these children.
As precise guidance available to states with respect to suitable alternative care remains partial and limited, the United Nations decided to take up this issue back in 2004. A working group of NGOs, including SOS Children's Villages, was formed to prepare a first draft of the guidelines on "the appropriate use and conditions of alternative care for children", whose purpose is twofold. On the one hand they seek to ensure that children are not placed in out-of-home care unnecessarily and, on the other, that the care provided corresponds to the rights and specific needs of each individual child.
The guidelines address primarily governments, but also international bodies and organisations, civil society, professionals, voluntary organisations and those private sector entities that are directly or indirectly involved in out-of-home care for children.
By being part of this process, SOS Children's Villages could contribute knowledge gathered during nearly 60 years of work with children without parental care, bringing in several crucial aspects to these UN guidelines, which are currently being discussed at the governmental level and are set to be adopted at the UN General Assembly in September 2008.
Raising the bar in out-of-home care
Thousands of children across Europe face the situation that they can no longer live with their parents. These children are often exposed to poverty and discrimination and are more vulnerable to abuse and neglect. It is therefore crucial to ensure that children without parental care receive the quality care they deserve.
Three organisations active in the field of alternative child care, SOS Children's Villages, International Foster Care Organisation (IFCO) and Fédération Internationale des Communautés Educatives (FICE), teamed up to compile a comprehensive set of quality standards for out-of-home child care in Europe: the "Quality4Children Standards".
In an innovative approach to data collection, children and youth without parental care, caregivers, social workers, social scientists, biological and foster parents from 32 European countries were asked to participate by sharing their particular stories, experiences and examples of good practise of out-of-home care. These were then used as a foundation for the standards.
Children and youth also were involved in the project since its inception, taking part of the advisory board, and were also at hand when the standards were unveiled at the European Parliament in June 2007. At the launching event, hosted by the Minister of European Parliament Lissy Gröner, young people shared their personal experiences as illustrations of the standards, making the event both surprising and moving.
After the successful launch, the three organisations will now work together to promote and implement the standards across Europe, and encourage their use across the globe as a model for similar standards. Speaking at the launch, Nigel Cantwell, a UNICEF consultant, said the standards "should be invaluable in stimulating improvements in alternative care systems in Europe", helping to give a voice to hundreds of thousands of children without parental care.