ࡱ> rtq7 `bjbjUU "x7|7|\l2<D2zzzzzzzzCCCCCCC$LE lGfCzzzzzCtzzCtttzzzCtzCtt>?DeCzn `Xvl J@&eC4C0D#ABGGeCtHse Lajos The responses given by the Hungarian child protection system to social exclusion and extreme poverty Introduction The current Hungarian child protection system was established 10 years ago. Owing to a lack of Hungarian precedents, the system had to be set up from scratch, based on international experience obtained mainly from the European Union. This newly established system, aimed primarily at supporting families, is regarded by Hungarian experts as a well-structured one. Through the structural establishment of the child protection system and its reform in terms of its approach and theory, significant progress has been made in countless areas examples include the saturation of Hungarian legislation with the spirit of childrens rights, the evolution of family support activities and the fight against child abuse while the weaknesses of child protection in Hungary are already visible, especially with respect to the main topics of discussion this conference (that is, the management of poverty and the mitigation of social exclusion) I am of the opinion that the effectiveness of child protection in Hungary can be measured by looking at the lives of those children who have been pushed to the periphery of society together with their families, and, at the same time, are becoming more and more alienated from their own families as well. I would like to divide this presentation into the following four sections: A brief overview of the Hungarian child protection system The entry of the street children problem in Hungary The presentation of the professional responses to the problem. The possible directions of improvement. The system of child protection in Hungary In 1989, the New York Convention designed what came to be known as childrens rights. In 1991 in Hungary it was introduced by Act LXIV. In the Budapest declaration UNICEF and the UN childrens law organization summarized their experience from what was learned in Eastern Europe. According to the declaration: we need a policy and programmes that provide services, a stable society and economic possibilities for the children who grow up without the care of their family. it is necessary to design extensive social welfare reforms including economic policies that allow the equal growth and democratic atmosphere that inspires citizens to participate in the decision-making. In 1997 Act XXXI was passed on the protection of children and the responsibilities of the guardian. This law was a milestone in the history of the protection system and the way in which children are taken care of. The purpose of the new legislation was to have an efficient system in place that would provide equal rights for every indigent child. This is a hierarchical system in which there is adherence to Hungarian and international principles and values. The modern child protection system in Hungary focuses on 3 important tasks: helping to bring up the child in a family, promoting of the child's physical, emotional and intellectual development the prevention and impeding of child endangerment and mistreatment the assurance of substitute protection if it is necessary. With the interests of children being its highest priority, the legislation on child protection differentiates between the levels of prevention, social support embodied in primary care, intervention by the authorities, and special services of child protection. On the level of prevention, an inter-branch safety network is established, in addition to financial support and benefits-in-kind, as well as child welfare service as a primary care system, with the purpose of preventing child endangerment and facilitating the bringing-up of children in families: it is called the child welfare reporting and monitoring network. Within the framework of the child welfare service offering personal care, a problem-solving system that utilizes the methodology of social work, as well as a sophisticated structure that monitors influences endangering children and organizes and operates effective services aimed at the management of such influences as required, are established. It includes the individual case management of the endangered child, family in-team work aimed at eliminating the endangering factors, and the provision of services aimed at meeting the childrens daily needs, or the full or partial takeover of the childs care on a temporary basis. In the events where child endangerment cannot be resolved through voluntary cooperation, or where the way in which the child is treated at home does not serve the childs interests, the child protection system applies the tool of intervention by the authorities to protect the child and enforce its rights. The first step at this level is that the way in which the child is taken care of at home is controlled by the competent authority; it means that the child is taken under the authoritys protection and the social workers of the child welfare service are trying to help the family being under surveillance. If these measures fail to resolve the child endangerment situation, the authority will take the child out of its family and try to find the place of child care that is the most suitable for meeting the childs needs and ensuring its personal development, either in the childs own environment or by using special services of child protection (such as institutional care). The child is taken out of its family only for as long as absolutely necessary in order to establish the required conditions at home. To this end, for the duration of the childs placement outside its family the child welfare service applies the tools normally used by social workers, and provides services and benefits, in order to assist the family in eliminating the endangering factors and keeping in touch with the child and, finally, to help the child return to its family. Consequently, the Hungarian child protection system tries to protect and serve children and their families on multiple levels. The child welfare service with its supporting and empowering role is in the first line of this multi-level system. The street children problem in Hungary There is no generally accepted definition for street children in Hungary. Although the threefold definition by UNICEF (children at risk, children on the street and children of the street) is known to a small professional circle, this definition is not used either on social policy level or in child protection in practice. Instead, those children who are at the risk of becoming children of the street, or who spend a part of their day on the streets under endangering circumstances, are classified into subcategories. The categories applied may overlap. 1. Children or adolescents who are in places inappropriate for their age, such as the streets of places of gambling or entertainment for adults, during school time, in the evening or during night hours. 2. Children with deviant behavior: children and adolescents who consume alcohol and narcotics on the streets and in public areas, act disorderly or live a life of crime. Children who damage their own health or may even commit suicide are included in this category. 3. Runaway youth. This category includes children who willfully leave a child care institution or their families without the permission of their legal representative (or guardian) for an extended period of time. 4. Children and adolescents who are abused. Due to the abuse they flee from home and find shelter at their friends or spend a few nights on the streets. 5. Underage prostitutes. The prostitution of children is considered to be serious endangerment requiring prompt measures: the children must be placed under the care of the appropriate institutions or the competent authorities. 6. Child beggars who work the streets either alone or with their parents or a gang of beggars, or possibly begging upon the order of others who pay a fee for such begging service. This is considered as a critical situation since the child is not taken care of as it should be based on its needs, and at the same time the child does not receive the physical, emotional and moral care it needs and its socialization is also abused because this kind of socialization is not directed toward a norm accepted by the society but facilitates the interiorization of a deviant behavioral pattern instead. 7. Homeless or extremely poor youth. Children, adolescents or expectant mothers who spend their nights on the streets or in public areas (that is, not in a room used for the purpose of dwelling). In Hungary, the category of children who live permanently on the streets is virtually non-existent, with the exception of one group. I do not want to say that it never happens in Hungary that a child spends the night on the streets or just away from its home, but the child care service can quickly find such abandoned children often with the help of the local community and provide them with the care they need. Although according to some experts the number of homeless people is around 25 to 30 thousand, this number does not really include children who permanently live the life of the homeless (80 percent of the homeless people are old or young males who lost their families). The child care service provides families who have lost their homes with temporary accommodation and intensive family preservation services aimed at ensuring that the family can have a new home and lead a life of their own within one or one and a half year. The only exception is youth who mostly consume hard drugs. They usually join groups of other addicts and live, for an extended period of time, in the home of one of the group members by courtesy, or illegally occupy an apartment, or live the life of the homeless, depending on their circumstances. Since the consumption of narcotics is illegal in Hungary, drug addicts hide in abandoned places and are very difficult to find. In the case of children at the risk of social exclusion, the main risk factors are the spreading of child poverty and the social exclusion of gypsies. I would like to illustrate the magnitude of this situation by presenting some figures. Child poverty In 2005, the number of dependent young people under the age of 18 was 1.9 million in Hungary. Families with children are poorer than the rest. 12 percent of the total population, and 19 percent of all the children (420 thousand children), live under the poverty line the level of which is widely accepted. The number of people living under the threshold below which they are eligible to grants is higher than that: until 2005, it was under that threshold that children became eligible to special child care and education allowance on a regular basis. 650 thousand children were provided with that kind of service. The living wage calculated by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office with the purpose of defining the socially acceptable level of poverty is even higher than that. In 2004, 28 percent of the population, and 40 percent of all the children (850 thousand children), lived below the above poverty line. The poverty of families with children results mainly from the existence of children and the less favorable labor activity rate resulting from the presence of children, and is differentiated based on the number of children in the family. Similarly to most Eastern European countries, the poverty line is strikingly marked at families with three children. The poverty rate of families with 3 or more children is three and a half times higher than families with a single child. One-third of the children in families with 2 children, and the majority of children in families with more than 2 children, must face serious hardships in terms of their standards of living. A family with children usually runs out of money before the end of the month and are unable to buy prime necessities such as medication. The familys debts that put it at the risk of losing its home keep accumulating. Almost all of the elements that enrich life are missing here for example, four-fifths of the children below the poverty line can never go on a vacation. One of every four families with children that live below the poverty line does not have a toilet and bathroom inside the house or apartment where they live, every fifth family does not have running water, and two-thirds of them live in houses or apartments with conventional heating. Maintaining a house or apartment is a problem for most of these families. In the year 2005, almost 40,000 natural gas meters and more than 600,000 electricity meters were shut down by the respective service providers. It is estimated that among the families for which the provision of these public utility services were discontinued there was a disproportionately high number of families with children. The level of indebtedness is a growing threat. Since a major increase in public utility costs is expected in the near future, these families are at the risk of losing their homes that often results in the breaking up of the family and the placement of children under the care of child care institutions. The situation of gypsies Children in gypsy families are in a particularly difficult situation. It is important to note that poverty is not limited to gypsy families: around two-thirds of the children who live in poverty, and half of the poorest children, are not gypsies. To put it another way: among the children who live in poverty there are more non-gypsy children than gypsies, but the percentage of poor children is much higher among gypsies. Moreover, various surveys show that the poverty and exclusion of gypsy children can be particularly deep due to reasons such as the permanent unemployment of their parents, their increasing segregation at institutions, home and school, as well as the related ethnic discrimination gypsies suffer in many areas, and the lack of access to higher-quality institutions and services. The ratio of gypsies is very high among those with economic or social disadvantages in their childhood. Forecasts show that the ratio of the gypsy population is on the increase, partly due to the improvement of the mortality rate. Therefore it is vital to turn the current schooling and training trends around. While experts estimate that the gypsy population is 5 to 6 percent of the total population, gypsies represent 30 percent of those people whose highest level of education is 8th grade at elementary school. Considering the current demographic trends the socio-economic exclusion and inadequate education of gypsies might have the result that in 10 to 15 years time a substantial part of the manpower will be unemployable due to their lack of skills that are marketable on the labor market. Another aspect of this problem is that the educational disadvantages of the majority of those children who start with a disadvantage will increase instead of decreasing during their years of school education. Segregation at schools plays an important role in this process, meaning that some of the poor children and the majority of gypsy children are forced to attend public schools and classes that offer lower quality education and poorer circumstances. The children of gypsy (and poor) families often go to schools that can be labeled as ethnic and social ghettos. The ratio of gypsies to the total number of children is continuously increasing while their social status is deteriorating (as a lasting impact of the shock caused by the regime change in Hungary). Corrective measures aimed at the reduction of segregation have not been taken early enough, and not even a fragment of the resources required for the successful school integration and compensatory education of gypsy children is available. The professional responses given to the issue of street children Coming back to the problem of children spending their time, or even the night, out on the streets, it is important to state that the Hungarian child protection system has woven a relatively strong safety net around endangered children in terms of both prevention and problem management. The elements of the safety net are the following: 1. The child welfare service focuses on primary care. The tasks of the child welfare service are: providing information about the supports available counseling providing support for pregnant mothers who are in a crisis situation organizing free-time programs involvement in official investigations of abuse organizing a reporting and monitoring network providing family care preparing special proposals for special care if needed. Some 130,000 endangered children belonging to some 70,000 families are registered by the child welfare system in Hungary. 2. From the year 2004 onward, local governments, and the district municipalities of Budapest, of communities or districts with more than forty thousand permanent residents are required to operate a child welfare center. A child welfare center is an advanced version of the child welfare service, offering more special services such as street-based and residential area-based social work. The purpose of street-based child welfare social work is to provide special help for children spending their time and strolling about on the streets, and to find children who left their home intentionally or have been abandoned by their guardian and are not taken care of, help such abandoned children get back to their homes, and initiate their being taken under temporary care or provided with child protection services. Street-based child-welfare social work is being performed by more than 80 institutions. For the time being, no information is available on the children reached by this street-based work. 3. Childrens Temporary Home. The childrens temporary home is a non-stop boarding institution where children are taken care of on a temporary basis by providing them with basic social services. The shelter can provide full board and lodging for a minimum of twelve and a maximum of forty children. Only those children are eligible to live in the childrens temporary home who are not looked after by anyone temporarily, or would not be looked after if they were not taken to the childrens temporary home, or who are not taken care of properly due to the familys life-coaching problems. In cooperation with the child welfare service, the childrens temporary home assists in the return of the child to his or her family. The child is provided with this type of social service for as long as the circumstances that make the child eligible for these services exist but not for more than twelve months. When the statutory period of temporary care expires but it is still not possible for the child to return to its family, the childs stay at the childrens temporary home may be extended upon the parents request by six months, or, if necessary, until the end of the school year, or the Guardian Office must be requested without delay to take the necessary steps. The Childrens Temporary Home provides temporary social services for approximately 1,400 children each year. 4. Temporary home for families. It is a type of institution similar to the Childrens Temporary Home but its primary purpose is to provide temporary accommodation for families with housing problems. The temporary home for families provides temporary social services for approximately 5,000 children and 3,000 parents each year. 5. Organization of alternative daytime programs. Such programs may be organized by the child welfare service or non-governmental organizations. Alternative day care as an important element of the primary care. Its major tasks are: to run useful free time programs the organization of special programs for different ages, interests, and other target groups day care for children. different group treatment for -social integration, -development of the communitys consciousness -strengthening of the communitys responsiveness 5. System of special child protection services. The aim of these services is to provide a home for children who are taken out of their families temporarily or permanently, or have become orphans. This system provides for the bringing up of almost 17,000 children; half of them is under the care of childrens homes while the other half is taken care of by a network of foster parents. Possible directions of improvement The child protection system in Hungary properly addresses the problem of endangered children who spend a part of their time on the streets, although there are numerous tasks such as the reduction of risks that are yet to be performed by us in order to improve the effectiveness of the process. However, extreme poverty and the social exclusion of gypsies represent such a complex set of problems that there is not much the child protection system can do on its own to handle them. The short-term and long-term mitigation of these problems will only become possible when social agreement is reached in respect of these goals, the government is committed to solve these problems, substantial resources are made available for this purpose, the various institutions, professions and sectors begin to cooperate with each other, and local communities, the local society and civilians (including parents) internalize this cause. Realizing this, the Hungarian Parliament established its multisectoral national strategies for both areas. In 2007, the Parliament approved the strategic plan of the program called The Decade of Gypsy Integration and the National Strategy titled Make Life Better for Children. The goals of the National Strategy Make Life Better for Children The National Strategy titled Make Life Better for Children is aimed at both improving the conditions of living for children and improving and modernizing the institutions that deal with and provide services for children. The National Strategy intends to achieve three comprehensive goals in one generation. Substantially reduce the ratio of children and families who live in poverty, to a fragment of the current ratio and thus bring up childrens life prospects and chances for receiving higher levels of education to those of children in a better social position. Radically reduce the extreme forms of child exclusion, segregation and deep poverty, and reduce the occurrences of deviancies that have a negative impact on life prospects. Induce a fundamental change in those methods of operation and approaches of institutions and services that currently contribute to the generation of poverty and social exclusion. These institutions and services should contribute to the development of childrens abilities and skills to a much greater extent than they do now, in order to make sure that when the children grow up they can join the life of the society as citizens capable of meaningful work. In order to achieve the above goals, changes are needed in many areas. The most important directions of improvement are the following: The improvement of the employment rate and the labor market situation The development of special services and benefits aimed at the improvement of the financial status of families with children The improvement of the quality and safety of housing and accommodation The development of institutions and services aimed at facilitating successful school achievement; the reduction of segregation. The development of personal and special services designed for families with children. Ensuring a healthier childhood. 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