| Abstract [eng] |
The transition from institutional to childcare in the community and family is gradual and time-consuming. Initially, a political framework had to be established, and various pieces of legislation governing child custody had been adopted. The transformation of institutional care aims to ensure that children left without parental care do not have to grow up in a care home, so that children find warmth and care in the families of adoptive parents. Or, in the absence of a sufficiently developed network of caregivers at this time, a family model could be grown in community-based childcare homes, ensuring the integration of children into the community and enabling them to grow up in a family-friendly environment. Not only the authorities but also the care institutions themselves had to be involved in this process. In cooperation with these institutions, a model of child care in community orphanages is being developed. This model is not yet well established, so this master's thesis examines how this model is described in legislation and how it is implemented in practice, what is the experience of its implementation. The aim of the work is to analyze the model of community orphanage and the peculiarities of its implementation in the transformation-deinstitutionalisation of the Lithuanian childcare system. The object of the work is the implementation of the community orphanage model. Tasks: 1. To review the process of deinstitutionalisation and its importance for the development of a child deprived of parental care. 2. To analyze the international and national legal acts that influenced the process of transformation of the Lithuanian child care system. 3. To discuss the community orphanages model according to the valid legal acts of the Republic of Lithuania.4. To explore the experience of implementing the model of community orphanage. The research method was a semi-structured interview with the heads of social care institutions, community orphanages staff and child care professionals. Data analysis method. Qualitative content analysis was applied in this master's thesis in order to investigate the experience of the leading managers of social care institutions, community orphanages employees and specialists administering child care services in the implementation of the community orphanages model. The study showed that the current model of community-based children's care homes is a hybrid of institutional child care and family care in a family, with features of both a family-friendly environment and institutional care. At present, children in foster care have better conditions to prepare for independent living in the community than living in an institution. |
