Overall situation of the target group in member states

• Author: Nordenmark Severinsson, Anna; Lerch, Véronique
• Pages: 14-26

Target Group Discussion Paper Children in Alternative Care

14

mainstream, inclusive, quality education for boys and girls with disabilities’. It also

recommended that ‘the renewed Agenda for the Rights of th e Child include a

comprehensive rights-based strategy for boys and girls with disabilities and safeguards to

protect their rights’ (CRPD, 2015).

The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (in Article 26) recognises ‘the right of persons with

disabilities to benefit from measures designed to ensure their independence, social and

occupational integration and participation in the life of the community ’. This Article

supports the development of programmes and actions for community-based care for

children with disabilities and without parental care.

The CoE Recommendation CM/Rec(2010)2 on the deinstitutionalisation and community

living of children with disabilities calls on member states to take appropriate legislative,

administrative, and other measures to replace institutional care with community -based

services within a reasonable timeframe and through a comprehensive approach. It states

that all children with disabilities should live with their own family except in exceptional

circumstances, and calls for phasing out new institutional placements and replacing them

with a comprehensive network of community provision.

2.2.5 Conclusions

Existing international human rights obligations concerning the TG are sufficiently

developed. However, their translation into national legislation and policies and the

implementation of those obligations nationally still lag behind, as demonstrated for

instance by the different cases before the ECtHR and the European Social Committee, as

well as by the weak national policies in this area (see Section 4).

The case law study by Häusler (2019) on some economic and social rights of children in

Europe concludes that ‘partly the CRC’s standards have been absorbed well by the

European human rights system, however (…) considerable weaknesses concerning both

procedural and substantial guarantees persist’ for children in alternative care. ‘First, both

regarding the right to appropriate care and the right to maintain regular contact, very few

cases have been filed by children themselves or solely on their behalf (e.g. without parents’

rights being involved). Second, in such cases where the focus of the attention is on the

rights of adults, domestic authorities and European bodies struggle to interpret and

implement the concept of the best interests of the child.’ She also stressed ‘it appears from

the case law that often there i s no strong representation of children’s interests in custody

and care proceedings’ (Häusler, 2019).

Overall situation of the Target Group in Member States

A lack of reliable data makes it impossible to estimate the number of children in alternative

care, and more specifically of children in institutional care, in the EU, and therefore to fully

capture their situation. Even if the statistics were available and disaggregated, the lack of

qualitative studies and mechanisms in place to collect the opinions and experiences of

children in alternative care makes some of the conclusions difficult. The trends highlighted

in Section 3.3 would need to be confirmed by more solid and reliable data.

3.1 Lack of reliable, complete, and disaggregated data on children in

alternative care

Some countries do not have any system to collect complete data on children in alternative

care. For example, in Slovenia, the national Statistical Office published data on children in

alternative care until 2013 and the Social Protection Institute until 2014 (Stropnik, 2019).

Similarly, the Federation Wallonia-Bruxelles does not seem to have a system to collect data

on children in alternative care; the Belgium Country Report based itself on an academic

study, which estimated the number of children in alternative care in that part of the country

with a margin of error of around 500 children) (Nicaise et al., 2019a). In Greece, there are

no official published data on the actual number of children living in residential care

institutions (Ziomas et al., 2019). Until there is further attention paid by MS to

strengthening data sets and analysis, then children in alternative care and at risk of losing