Representatives from various European countries, including Malta, have contributed on a set of quality standards for European out-of-home children and youth care. The official presentation of these standards took place last month at the European Parliament in Brussels. The standard presentation was embedded into various keynote presentations on the issue of Improving the situation of children in out-of-home care.
Representatives of the European Union, various international organisations as well as political personalities attended the event. Malta was represented by Olivia Galea Seychell, Group Research Senior Manager of the Foundation for Social Welfare Services and by John Rolè, Service Area Leader of the Fostering Service within Agenzija Appogg and National Project Coordinator.
Hundreds of thousands of children and young people in Europe cannot live with their biological parents. The aim of the Quality4Children (Q4C) project is to guarantee and improve chances of development of such persons while in alternative care. Together with a group of affected persons, three big international organisations in the field of out-of-home child care, SOS Children’s Villages, IFCO (International Foster Care Organisation) and FICE (Féderation Internationale des Communautés Educatives), have developed a set of quality standards for out-of-home child and youth care.
A total of 18 standards, which have been divided into the three chapters of Decision-making and admission process, Care-taking process and Leaving-care process have been compiled. As a next step, the standards are to be put into practice, while being continuously evaluated. Independent of the three big organisations which will use the Q4C standards in their own work, there are concrete declarations of intent of various countries to put the Q4C standards into practice. The youth welfare authorities of Switzerland, The Netherlands and Malta, namely the Foundation for Social Welfare Services are planning to use the Q4C standards as a frame of action for guaranteeing and improving care quality.
Locally, this document is going to be used as a base in formulation of our local residential and foster care standards. In fact at the moment, work has already started in formulating the standards for residential care while during the next six months various entities will be working on foster care standards. In both cases, the participation of children is of utmost importance.
A total of 32 European countries participated in the project. All these countries appointed their national project coordinators who were in charge of coordinating researchers in collecting good practice stories regarding out-of-home child care in their respective countries. They particularly gave a voice to the affected children and youths as well as their biological families and care persons, which allowed these to play a substantial role in the development of the quality standards. Furthermore, young people are also represented in the Q4C steering group to make sure that their view on the issue is solidly anchored in the project.
This event was the first step towards the next goal of Q4C: advocacy and implementation of the Q4C Standards in Europe.