2022-09-27
National Audit Office: child carers lack help, families reluctant to provide care for older children
The child care and adoption system does not sufficiently provide the necessary assistance and services for the child and the family, temporary custody takes longer than it should, there is a lack of carers for older children, and insufficient attention is paid to accompanying the child to independent life. Such results were revealed by the audit “Ensuring the rights and interests of the child in the child care and adoption” carried out by the National Audit Office.
“Despite the shortcomings identified, we see a positive development in the care and adoption system: measures are in place to avoid unjustified removal from the family, the protection of the rights of the child is guaranteed 24 hours a day. We have not reached the target of reducing the number of children living in care institutions to 10 %, but the change has nevertheless occurred — this figure decreased from 29.3 % to 22.6 %. In order to achieve the target, it is necessary to consistently address the problems of the system", says Kristina Česaitienė, Principal Auditor-Audit Team Leader.
A child is granted temporary custody in the case of assistance to his/her biological family to enable the child to return to it. The audit found that temporary custody lasts longer (it lasted more than a year for almost a third of children) or recurs (it was repeated two or more times for 15 % of children). This is detrimental to the best interests of the child, because they are forced to change their place of residence and find themselves in the care of different carers.
Before the child is taken out of the family, it is assessed what kind of help is needed to support him/her in the biological family. However, according to the auditors, assistance is time-consuming because parents lack motivation, due to queues it is difficult to get to the necessary specialists, more problems are revealed in the course of the process, the reasons for starting the assistance do not disappear. It was found that 27 % of all municipalities did not provide some basic services to a child or family: mediation, day-care services, early rehabilitation of children’s development disorders, etc.
After taking a child from his/her biological family and providing permanent care, there is a lack of carers for older children (from 10 years of age), those with disabilities or those with special needs. Also, few families agree to welcome brothers or sisters together. One of the matters facilitating carers‘ and children’s lives could be suitable services, but currently 39 % of carers have indicated that not all the services required are available in care centres, e.g. speech therapist, specialised psychologist, psychiatrist, etc.
Data from municipalities show that 6 times less money was used for the care of one child in the family in 2021 than in institutions (18.6 thousand euros in childcare and community care homes, and about 3,000 euros in a family or foster families). In the absence of child care in families, the child is not given a family environment in accordance with his/her interests, and it costs more for the state.
The auditors found that 68 % of child care institutions do not pay sufficient attention to accompanying the child to independent life, e.g., they are not taught how to handle household or financial affairs or get the job they want. Only 15 municipalities provided an accompanying service for young people aged 16-24. It was established that some children do not receive the services of sanatorium treatment, speech therapist, special educator, psychologist. Children’s care institutions have indicated that it can be up to 6 months wait for some of the services.
After the implementation of the recommendations of the National Audit Office, measures will be provided to encourage persons to take care of or adopt older children, children with disabilities or health problems, as well as those with siblings. Measures are planned to halve the number of children growing up in care institutions by 2030.