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Plans to aid broken families

Current system 'insufficient'; officials propose changes to send children back home

By Hilda Hoy
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
August 8th, 2007 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST
Authorities may separate siblings David and Brenda, who live in a children's home in Prague.
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When 10-year-old David and his baby sister Brenda were taken from their parents early this year, their lives changed forever. In the five months since their parents lost custody, they’ve lived at a children’s home in Prague 8.
The life of poverty they were snatched from often plagues members of the Roma, or Gypsy, community.
“[David and Brenda’s] parents live in a dilapidated house. It is horrible there — dirty, no toilet, I mean it is just bad,” said Daniela Bittmanová, a social worker at the home where the two siblings now live.
When their mother, who lives in Hradec Králové, east Bohemia, gave birth in May to her 12th child, the baby was taken from her immediately. Their father is still unemployed.
Now, authorities are considering returning David to the parents but will likely put Brenda up for adoption, even if it means splitting up the family further, Bittmanová said.
David and Brenda are just two of approximately 22,000 children growing up in state institutions, including children’s homes, juvenile detention centers and homes for disabled children. Relative to the population, far more children end up in institutions here than in almost any other European country.
To remedy this situation, officials are proposing changes to ensure fewer children end up in institutional care.
In its May 2 edition, The Prague Post ran a story about this issue. Experts interviewed for that story blamed everything from bureaucracy, poorly trained social workers, an outdated social-care system and a lingering communist-era fondness for state intervention in family affairs.
Whatever the cause may be, “The situation has become unbearable,” said Marie Vodičková, director of the Fund for Children in Need (FOD).
“Unfortunately, a great number of the children are [in institutions] for socioeconomic reasons,” she added. “If municipalities, for example, ran social housing for socially weak families, there would not have to be so many children placed in institutions.”
Three months after that Prague Post story, the government is beginning to take action and promising change.
“The system of social and legal protections for kids has to deal with many problems in the Czech Republic,” admitted Jiří Sezemský, spokesman for the Labor and Social Affairs Ministry. “Our ministry is aware of this insufficiency and we are finalizing many proposals that should improve the current situation.”
Labor and Social Affairs Minister Petr Nečas announced one of these improvements July 3: New committees, or “conferences,” formed by multiple relevant parties — including doctors, teachers, social workers and the family itself — will work together with families in crisis to find a solution that doesn’t end with the children being removed.
Taking a child from his or her family is an extreme solution that should only be considered when all other methods have failed, Nečas said.
“This conference will put together an individual plan on how to work and deal with a particular family,” Sezemský said. “This plan will consist of several steps … to solve the situation — meaning there will be steps for parents, steps for kids and steps for the social workers.”
For the children that still must be removed, the government plans to expand and strengthen the system of foster care so that fewer kids grow up in institutional settings, he said.
Another plan is to streamline the complex system that governs child protection in this country.
Until now, the social welfare of children falls under the jurisdiction of three separate government ministries, depending on the child’s age. Social workers are employed on a regional level, and rulings on family welfare are made by local courts.
Now, a centralized National Office for Employment and Social Administration is in the works. “We want this office to be in charge of all [children’s social] care,” Sezemský said. “The current system is disintegrated.”
If all goes to plan, the office will be operational by January 2008, he said.
Vodičková is pleased with this plan. “We have since the beginning suggested that there should be some institution to work on these issues in a unified way,” she said.
— Naďa Černá and Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Hilda Hoy can be reached at hhoy@praguepost.com


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