EN:

FICE International is an international organization focused on children and youth who are in need of out-of-home care. One of its major activities is organizing a world congress every three years. In these congresses, professionals from all over the world who are involved with out-of-home care can meet, exchange knowledge, and learn from each other. The most recent FICE congress, held in October 2019 in Tel Aviv, Israel, was dedicated to the theme “Better Future Opportunities for Children and Young People in Multicultural Societies”. The editor of this journal has been kind enough to offer this platform for the publication of selected material presented at the congress. FICE-International, and we as guest editors, are most thankful to Prof. Sibylle Artz, editor of the IJCYFS, for this opportunity. The richness and variety of the selected articles, coming from 10 countries, could not be accommodated in a single issue. The editors of the journal have therefore decided to divide the articles into two special issues, to be published one after the other. The first of these issues includes articles in three thematic categories: (a) Evidence-based research on effects of out-of-home care, (b) Historical and sociological perspectives on institutionalized child and youth care, and (c) Normalization — a challenge for foster care programs. Four further categories will provide the framework for the forthcoming second special issue: (d) Emotional and pedagogical considerations, (e) Refugee children and youth, (f) Residential staff, and (g) Care leavers.

EN:

Until recently, SOS Children’s Villages International, like many organisations in the social sector, lacked a rigorous and systematic approach to gauging the long-term impact of their services. With this in mind, SOS Children’s Villages International developed a social impact evaluation methodology in 2014 to measure the long-term effects of its services on children and their families and communities, as well as the social return on investment. This evaluation methodology has been tested and applied to similar service types across 15 low-, middle-, and high-income countries worldwide. The findings are regularly consolidated, in order to derive trends and learnings for the global organisation and to inform strategy and policy. The present article will discuss the evaluation methodology and the related limitations. Conclusions regarding the validity of the methodology will be offered in terms of the measurement of social service impact and the way forward.

EN:

In the project “Creating Futures”, youths, staff, and leaders from youth homes in Switzerland and Hungary collaborate in a Community of Practice. Their goal is to develop organisational innovations that allow each of the youth homes to more effectively promote the self-empowerment of young people: their ability to take charge of their own lives and realise their own ideas of the future. This paper reports results, learnings, and first impacts regarding both the topic and the collaborative process in the project’s first formalised year, 2019. In developing its ways of working, the Community of Practice aims to engage as many persons as possible in each youth home. Through focus group discussions, a literature review, and a Young Expert Exchange, organisational factors that promote self-empowerment in residential care have been identified. Representatives of each youth home have selected those of most interest and have begun to assess their existing good practice as well as needs and potentials for innovation. The article includes the voices of participants as it reflects on the requirements for, and benefits and challenges of, youth participation and collaboration within a highly diverse Community of Practice.

EN:

The virtual environment available through the internet is an important domain of children’s subjective well-being. Widespread usage of information technology brings risks as well as benefits, a topic now under intensive study by professionals in multiple fields. To date there has been a lack of research about the experiences of children from group accommodation settings when navigating the virtual environment. The main goal of the present study, which involved 510 high school students living in dormitories in Split-Dalmatia County, was to determine and document patterns of internet usage and internet addiction, and to examine another internet behavior, cyberbullying. Our results show that 3.73% of the children we studied manifested a severe level of internet addiction, while about one third took part in cyberbullying as victim, perpetrator, or both. An important finding is that children involved with cyberbullying have significantly higher levels of internet addiction, suggesting a relationship between these phenomena. In the second, qualitative, phase of the study, the quantitative research findings were discussed with children, parents, teachers, and staff. Our results enable a better understanding of young people`s behaviors in the online world, and could contribute to the development of educational programs for children and young people and the promotion of evidence-based practice in dormitory settings.

EN:

The performance of household chores by children in Japanese residential care institutions has been widely accepted as a practice that fosters children’s independence and self-sufficiency. However, children coming from neglectful or dysfunctional families often require sensitive, individualized care, which they did not receive from their family of origin. While a shift away from large-scale institutions has begun, with smaller units or group homes now accounting for 40% of all care institutions, it is not clear that family-like, individualized care has been achieved in these smaller group homes. This study involved 61 participants aged 10 to 15 years and their care workers from six residential care institutions in the greater Tokyo area. It explored what aspects of care quality were related to the presence of certain characteristics of traditional management-oriented care: fixed rules for household chores and lack of choice in daily living. Care workers were asked whether children washed their own dishes, did their own laundry, chose their own clothes when shopping, and had mandatory events to attend in the residential care institutions. Care quality was assessed using the Early Adolescent HOME (Home Observation for Measurement of Environment) developed for Japanese residential care institutions (EA-HOME-JP). The findings suggest that care workers should re-examine their intentions in setting and applying household chore rules while exploring which aspects of child care, including regulatory activities and modeling, should be emphasized in order to actualize family-like and individualized care in institutions.

EN:

Many of the child welfare policies and practices in Switzerland before the law reform of 1981 were rather invasive and were exercised under a legal context that sometimes threatened basic human rights. The inclusion of survivors of such measures in the research process has been vigorously requested in Switzerland. Therefore, four individuals who had been placed in institutions as children have been included in the process of preparing a recently initiated, 60-year follow-up study of individuals placed in infant care institutions in Switzerland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Using focus interviews and “think-aloud” methods, the interviewees commented on two parts of the planned research process: (a) how to contact the cohort, and (b) finalising the assessment instruments. Data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Interviewees felt their participation was a sign of recognition of their experience and expertise. Their input contributed to the research in a host of ways. For example, they helped to make documents more understandable, identified errors and redundancies, and pointed out wording that might cause insecurities or negative reactions. They also pointed to shortcomings in some of the items used in the assessment instruments. In addition, they made significant contributions regarding how best to approach and work with the cohort. This study shows that, when researching historical compulsory social measures, the inclusion of formerly institutionalised individuals in development and implementation is not only feasible, but is of significant benefit to the quality of the research.

EN:

The reform of the child care system in Lithuania started with the Ministry of Social Security and Labor approving the Strategic Guidelines for Deinstitutionalization in 2012, followed by the Transition from Institutional Care to Community-Based Services in 2014. The strategic aim of the reform was to create a system including a comprehensive range of services that would enable every child and their family or guardians to receive individual services as well as community assistance according to their needs. The process of transformation of institutional care was designed in two steps: creation of the necessary conditions for the transformation, which took place in 2014 to 2017, and development of infrastructure in the regions, planned for 2017 to 2020, but now extended to 2023. The goal of this article is to discuss the deinstitutionalization process by presenting legal regulations, information about the conceptualization and scope of the project, and evidence based on documents and statistical and secondary data analysis. I will also discuss possible contradictions between analytical and political discourses, and quantitative and qualitative evidence.

EN:

In the area of foster care concerning children and youth with special needs due to disability or medical fragility, there is a paucity of knowledge and research. In Germany, these groups in foster care who have high special needs are an invisible and neglected population at risk. These children and youth are mostly cared for in residential homes; however, some are living in foster families and benefit from a familial setting. The purpose of the study was to understand how foster parents manage their lives with a child or youth who has special needs, and how they meet the challenges that arise. The qualitative research design used the method of narrative inquiry through in-depth interviews, which were conducted in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt with 19 foster parents from 15 families. Within the framework of grounded theory, the author developed a theoretical structure of the strategies foster parents use for coping. Results showed that foster parents dealt with this new and often unpredictable situation by applying one of three patterns of strategies — action-, resource-, or reflection-oriented — based on their personal experiences and worldview. Understanding these behavioral patterns gives administrative and supportive entities like child welfare systems and agencies a unique and tailored approach to recruit, retain, train, and counsel foster families adequately, and to strengthen their well-being and their ability to perform well for themselves and their children and youth.