Out-of-Home Care for Children at-Risk in Israel and in Spain: Current Lessons and Future Challenges

Abstract

The biological family is a child's natural environment. However, in every country in the world there are children unable to live with their biological families, who therefore may be placed in public care. This is frequently due to inadequate parental care, such as abuse and neglect. Long-term public care settings mainly comprise residential treatment and family foster care. In recent decades a clear trend among many OECD countries is to reduce residential care facilities and move towards familial solutions for children at-risk (for a general

El apoyo social durante el acogimiento: su relevancia para el bienestar de los niños y las niñas en situación de protección

“…Además, la familia biológica suele contemplar a la familia ajena como un rival en competencia por el afecto de sus hijos e hijas, lo que facilita que se produzcan más acogimientos en familia extensa y en centros residenciales que en familias ajenas. Estos valores culturales no son exclusivos de la cultura española, sino que también pueden observarse en otros países del sur de Europa como Italia (Del Valle et al, 2013) y Portugal (López, Delgado, Carvalho y Del Valle, 2014) y en otros países tales como Israel (Kosher et al, 2018). Como indican diversos estudios (Del Valle et al, 2009;Montserrat, 2006), la figura mayoritaria que acoge a niños y niñas en medidas de protección en España es la abuela materna, conviviendo con sus nietos y nietas de forma monoparental.…”

Invisible children and non-essential workers: Child protection during COVID-19 in Israel according to policy documents and media coverage

“…The family is socially seen as central to the individual's life, and correspondingly, CPS considers family relationships a top priority. This is one of the main explanations why residential care is the most prevalent option for youth in out-of-home placements (74%), as opposed to foster care that is more common in other Western countries ( Kosher, Montserrat, Attar-Schwartz, Casas, & Zeira, 2018 ). In the Israeli context, it is much more acceptable for a child to grow up in residential care, often referred to as "boarding school", echoing the first years after statehood in which many children used to live in these settings after immigrating without any family members.…”

“…However, the number of children at-risk in the community is on the rise: in 2000, 4.8% of children at risk were in care, and by 2014, this fell to 2.6% ( Israel National Council for the Child, 2014 ; Zemach-Marom, Halavan-Eilat, & Sabo-Lael, 2012 ). It seems that while these efforts reduced the number of out-of-home placements, they changed the profile of at-risk children in the community, stretching the ability of the CPS to protect those children in the community, support the families and avoid out-of-home placement ( Kosher et al, 2018 ; Zemach-Marom et al, 2012 ).…”

Norm Localization and Contestation: The Politics of Foster Children in Turkey

“…The rise of foster care systems and the turn to families to replace institutionalization of orphaned and abandoned children have been enthusiastically supported by international institutions to protect the best interests of children (UNICEF 2018). There is global consensus that in-family care is a superior option to institutionalization for children who need alternatives to parental care (Kosher et al 2018). The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children specify that states should strive to keep children with their families where possible and to encourage countries "to undertake efforts to reduce the numbers of children living in institutional care and, whenever possible, to prevent institutionalization in the first place" (UNICEF 2017).…”