Evolution of foster care in Romania

Rezumat

This article was presented at the International Conference PROPHYLACTICS OF CHILD ABANDONMENT: PROBLEMS, OBSTACLES AND LESSONS LEARNED, organized by the National Committee for Child Protection of the Government of Kazakhstan, UNICEF Kazakhstan and Women`s League of Creative Initiative, between the 22nd and the 23rd of November, 2006, in Astana, and it aimed to highlight the results of a nation-wide study concerning the child protection system in Romania carried out in 2006. The presentation aims to analyse the evolution of the foster care system in Romania and the aspects related to the development of this social service, to inventory the issues that need to be considered in order to initiate a foster care service from the perspective of child protection professionals who were consulted either in individual interviews or within focus group discussions organised in order to collect data in 2006 in several Romanian directorates of social protection. The statistic data were obtained following the application of questionnaires at national level.