engleski

Challenges of fostering Roma children in Croatia

Foster care in Croatia has relatively long tradition: first foster families were registered in 1902. Since the beginning of new millennia foster care has been recognized as the desirable out-of-home placement, which resulted in various scientific and professional projects, public campaigns and development of foster careers associations. However, there are some critical points that need further improvement: uneven development of foster care in different region ; insufficient number of foster families for specific groups of children (young children ; children with emotional and behaviour problems, children with disabilities, ethnical minorities, especially Roma children) ; need for development of specialized/ treatment foster care ; insufficient support to foster parents by social services, improvement of national data base on fostering, etc. In 2013 research was conducted in order to examine foster care of children under the age of 7 years from foster carers’ perspectives. Qualitative approach was applied. Data were collected through interviews with foster carers and afterwards processed using thematic analysis. Within the themes that were brought up by the foster parents, fostering of Roma children was recognized as a issue that needs further attention in research and in practice. Foster parents pointed out several difficulties regarding foster care of Roma children: children most often come to foster care with severe health problems and neglected ; birth families are burdened with many social problems such as poverty, problems with alcohol, aggression ; foster parents often act as carers for parents too. In some cases foster parents are reluctant to foster Roma children due to potential problems with their birth families- even if they do foster Roma children in most cases they refuse to allow parents to visit children in their homes. Above mentioned challenges call for new strategies in order to enable quality foster care of Roma children and adequate support to foster parents.

Roma children; foster care; Croatia

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