Executive Summary
European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) 2014—2020, along with policy innovations by the European Union, have paved the way in several Member States to make progress in reforming the child protection systems towards strengthening families and ensuring alternative family- and community-based care for children. However, not all EU Member States have benefited equally from the initiatives and many countries outside the EU did not get the opportunity to transform their child protection systems through EU funding instruments.
Across Europe, thousands of our youngest and most vulnerable citizens live hidden from the world in institutions for children, against their needs and wishes, and contrary to international law. Decades of research prove that growing up in institutions has detrimental psychological, emotional and physical implications, such as attachment disorders, cognitive and developmental delays, and a lack of social and life skills leading to multiple disadvantages during adulthood. The purpose of the child protection system’s reform is much broader than the closure of institutional facilities; its goal is to achieve a comprehensive transformation of the care system, changing the nature of service provision in a country. Systematically targeting institutional care provides a valuable entry point into understanding the nature, location, and mix of services needed in each national context in order to best support children and their families, and when separation is necessary, to provide suitable alternative care for those children.
Based on our analysis of the use of EU funds both within EU borders and across neighbourhood and pre-accession countries, we call upon the EU to maintain, strengthen and expand the use of funds so they make a greater impact and go further to eliminate institutions for children across Europe and beyond.
We call on the EU to:
Maintain the promotion of the transition from institutional to family- and community-based care through targeted investments via ESIF.
Strengthen:
- the existing ex-ante conditionality 9.1 of ESIF, which refers to deinstitutionalisation;
- the oversight of how EU funds are used for deinstitutionalisation to ensure they are in line with national strategies and action plans and lead to systemic changes;
- the implementation of the European Code of Conduct on Partnership (ECCP) through broader engagement of the EU and civil society.
Expand:
- the existing ex-ante conditionality 9.1 of ESIF, which refers to deinstitutionalisation, so that it applies to all EU Member States;
- the same principles of the European Social Fund (ESF) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) regulations to promote the transition from institutional to community-based care to all EU internal and external funding.
