Description
The goal of the project is to open a debate about foster care for unaccompanied minors in the Czech Republic. Unaccompanied minors are a particularly vulnerable group of refugee and foreign children who arrive to the CR without parents. The current practice is to place these children solely into special institution for children-foreigners, not to foster families. The project aims to change the practice of institutionalization and initiate a new practice of placing unaccompanied minors into foster families.We have also selected an partner - Norwegian organization BYMIF from Oslo which has wide-spread experience with foster care of migrant unaccompanied children within migrant communities and we also plan to organize an expert seminar where the experts from partner organization will present their experience. We plan to network with local organizations providing trainings for foster parents. The unaccompanied minors will also receive our assistance with integration into Czech society.
Summary of project results
The target group of the project are unaccompanied minors who are particularly vulnerable group of refugee and foreign children who arrive to the CR without parents or other legal representatives. The goal of the project was to open a debate about foster care for unaccompanied minors in the Czech Republic, because current practice was to place these children solely into special institution for children-foreigners, not to foster families. The project aimed to change the practice and initiate placing of unaccompanied minors into foster families. The unaccompanied minors also received our assistance with integration into Czech society. We provided free-of-charge social and legal counselling to unaccompanied minors and realized workshops preparing UAMs for an individual life after they’ve reached 18 yeras of age. During the project we visited regularly facilities, where the unaccompanied minors were placed and we provided them free-of-charge social and legal counselling As a part of the project was written guide for unnaccompanied minors with the title „My Life in the Czech Republic.“ The seminar about foster care for UAM’s was held within the project at which the Norwegian partner organisation presented the model of foster care for unaccompanied minors from Oslo. The findings gained during the project period, including comparisons of good practice among the different EU countries are summarised in the final analysis “Possibilities of Foster Care for Unaccompanied Minors in the Czech Republic”. Thanks to international cooperation we opened the debate about placing unaccompanied minors into migrant families which are already integrated into czech society. This solution could solve the problem with the lack of foster parents in general in the Czech Republic.
Summary of bilateral results
The goal of the project was to open a debate about foster care for unaccompanied minors in the Czech Republic. The current practice at the begining of the project was to place these children solely into special institution, not to foster families. The project aimed to initiate a new practice of placing UAM‘s into foster families. The project partner - Norwegian organization BYMIF has wide-spread experience with foster care of migrant unaccompanied children within migrant communities in Oslo, so he could contribute to achieving the project objectives. Partner organization presented their experience with foster care at the expert seminar in October 2015 in Prague. After this seminar we could open discussion, if the norwegian model could be used in Czech republic, or what are other possibilities for UAM’s in Czech Republic. Thanks to international cooperation we opened the debate about placing unaccompanied minors into integrated migrant families and not only into czech families. This would solve also the problem with the lack of foster parents in general in the Czech Republic.