THERE IS NO PLACE for DISCRIMINATION in WORK with CHILDREN

This project is realized in the scope of an antidiscrimination programme TRANSITION FACILITY NROS.

WHY

Its aim is to put in practice the amendments of two significant acts concerning children (Social-Legal Protection of Children Act, Act Concerning Institutional and Protective Care in School Facilities) that came to force in 2006. STREP cooperated on these amendments. The both of them provide new options for parents of children placed in institutional care that can contribute to reducing the level of deprivation of children placed away from their family and to fulfilment of human rights documents. They are anti-discriminational in comparison with the former legislation that was highly repressive to socially endangered families with children placed in institutional care. The placement of children was considered to be a final solution of their situation. Parents got even more frustrated and often gave up the contact with their child/children. This fact only reassured mistrust of professionals in any improvement in parents´ ability to master parenting skills and care for their children. It was a vicious circle.

WHAT and HOW

The outcomes of this programme are the information cards for parents of children placed in institutional care. They were created by the team of experts (leader workers of social-legal protection of children, providers of services for families, institutional care facilities). The cards inform parents in an easy way of what is important for their children and where to turn to for help and support. They help parents to understand the situation. They explain how it is important for children to be in contact with their family. The cards help to fulfil the rights of children and parents in practice. They were created in three versions to cover all kinds of institutional care facilities ("diagnostic facilities, facilities for children with behavioural disorders, facilities for children without behavioural disorders"). STREP kindly asks the workers of the aforementioned facilities to send the information cards to the parents and enables other institutions to use the cards for the same target group of endangered families with children.
Owing to long-term repressive approaches to socially endangered families, the prejudice is rooted in the community that these families are not interested in their children and the children are far better off in institutional care. The experience of the STREP´s workers and some other professionals disproves that. The first sentences uttered by children after their placement are usually: I want to go home. When will I see my mum and dad? Do they know that I am here? Will you let them know? Is smoking allowed here? Parents might take the removal of their child for their own parenting failure and get frustrated and embarrassed for this. These feelings might lead to their avoidance of the particular professionals (social workers, the staff of the particular institutional care facility) and to the resulting interruption of the contact with their child. In some cases, parents get frustrated and furious with the staff of the particular institutional care facility and blame them for “robbing them of their children”. They are not willing to cooperate with “these robbers” and are often aggressive to them or they do not communicate at all.
The behaviour described above might appear as a lack of interest in the children. It is in the interest of children that the effective cooperation between their parents and the relevant professionals is established. To achieve this, it is necessary that professionals accept the parents´ feelings, express their understanding and willingness to help them and support them. Such cooperation is likely to support a safe and satisfactory contact between children and their parents. If children are to really understand themselves, they need to know their parents, family, roots. The STREP´s credo is: "To really help children means to help their own families."

STREP seeks to overcome this prejudice and generally raise the public awareness of this issue by the series of five social advertisements published in newspapers and the COMPASS – a poster for parents of children placed away from their family.

The social advertisements depict feelings and needs of children placed in institutional care or endangered by placement and their parents. They have been created in an interactive way to prompt readers to think about what really helps children placed in institutional care and what their parents feel.

The COMPASS shows parents and their children the path to follow so that they do not lose each other in such a difficult situation and get closer to each other again.

Other STREP´s activity within this programme contributing to the implementation of antidiscrimination points of the amendments of aforementioned acts is the role of a "clashing guardian" of the child in the course of child care proceedings.