This chapter in the book Children and Family Social Work summarizes recent progress in reforming children’s care system and reducing reliance on large-scale residential institutions in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In this region, formal out-of-home care services for children deprived of parental care evolved over centuries through diverse models and levels of provision. With the rise of communism in the early twentieth century, the state assumed full responsibility for organizing and delivering care. The dominant model became large-scale residential institutions, rooted in the ideology that the state could best raise children whose families were deemed unfit, producing loyal and productive citizens.
This model was widely discredited after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. During the 1990s, the poor quality of institutional care and its long-term negative impacts on children became more evident. Yet, in many countries, it took decades before institutional care began to be systematically replaced with community-based alternatives aligned with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This shift eventually led to significant reductions in institutionalization, the closure of large facilities, and the introduction of community-based support and care services. Nonetheless, major challenges persist. Many countries still struggle to develop and adequately fund these services, including building a professional social service workforce capable of preventing family separation and ensuring children’s protection from violence, neglect, and exploitation.