Quality4Children - Official presentation at the European Parliament

Hundreds of thousands of children and youths in Europe can not grow up with their biological parents. The aim of the Quality4Children project is to guarantee and improve their chances of development. Together with a group of affected persons, three big international organisations in the field of out-of-home child care, SOS Children's Villages, IFCO (International Foster Care Organisation) and FICE (Federation Internationale des Communautes Educatives), have developed a set of quality standards for out-of-home child and youth care.

The official presentation of these standards will take place at the European Parliament in Brussels on 13 June 2007 at the invitation of Lissy Groener, member of the European Parliament. The event will be attended by representatives of the European Union and international organisations.

How can the development chances of children and youths who can not grow up with their biological families and therefore live in out-of-home care be guaranteed and improved? Which good practices in the field of out-of-home care have proven successful from the point of view of the affected children and youths, their parents and care persons? Which quality standards can we derive from these practices for the different types of out-of-home care? And finally: How can we put these quality standards into practice? These are the questions Quality4Children focuses on.

A total of 32 European countries participate in the project. All these countries appointed their national project coordinators who were in charge of collecting good practice stories regarding out-of-home child care in their respective countries. They particularly gave a voice to the affected children and youths as well as their biological families and care persons, which allowed these to play a substantial role in the development of the quality standards. Now, a total of 18 standards, which have been divided into the three chapters of "Decision-making and admission process", "Care-taking process" and "Leaving-care process" are available. As a next step, the standards are to be put into practice, while being continuously evaluated.

Independent of the three organisations which will use the Q4C standards in their own work, there are concrete declarations of intent of various countries to put the Q4C standards into practice. The youth welfare authorities of Switzerland, the Netherlands and Malta, for example, are planning to use the Q4C standards as a frame of action for guaranteeing and improving care quality.

The official presentation will take place at the European Parliament in Brussels on 13 June, at the invitation of Lissy Groener, member of the European Parliament and in presence of representatives of various international organisations, including, of course, the three Quality4Children partner organisations, SOS Children's Villages, FICE and IFCO.

The standard presentation will be embedded into various key-note presentations on the issue of "Improving the situation of children in out-of-home-care. They will deal with the need for quality standards but also with indicators for good out-of-home child and youth care. As of 13 June, the Q4C quality standards will be available in both print and online versions and can be accessed via this webpage: www.quality4children.info

Contact

Ms Doris Kirchebner Communications Officer SOS-Kinderdorf International +43/512/3310-5171 doris.kirchebner@sos-kd.org