Alternative family care is a welcome and functional way to offer children who cannot be raised by their own parents an alternative to institutional care. The basic forms of foster care are guardianship, foster care and temporary foster care. What are the differences between them and when does which option apply? The answers can be found in this article.
Thousands of children in the Czech Republic are in a situation where their biological parents cannot or for some reason do not want to raise them. According to experts, the best solution to such a situation is to find an environment for such children that will best replace the family model, i.e. a surrogate family environment. Thanks to this, they can experience normal family situations, acquire the usual habits of life and prepare themselves better for real life.
All this cannot be offered (or only very imperfectly) by any quality institutional education, which is why foster care is the right choice. In terms of the law, we distinguish between:
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In the context of children’s rights and care, we can also mention the concepts of guardianship and custody. Rather than ordinary care of the child itself, this is of particular importance in a legal sense, for example in the representation of the child. However, it depends in particular on who is appointed as guardian or custodian.
We have dealt with the rights and obligations of the guardian in a separate article.
The legal regulation of foster family care is mainly contained in the Act on Social and Legal Protection of Children and the Act on Foster Care. Together, these laws set out the rights and obligations of both children and persons providing foster care and specify the conditions and functioning of foster care.
The recently approved amendment to the Act on Social and Legal Protection of Children is also a step towards the promotion of foster family care. It sets (with certain exceptions) the age limit for placing children in institutional care at three years of age. Until then, it is most suitable for the child’s future development to form an emotional bond with a specific person. According to child psychologists, this is the best option even if that person will no longer be caring for the child in the future.
Looking at one particular day of a child with foster carers, foster carers or temporary foster carers, we would probably not know the difference. So how do the different types of care differ?
The reasons and motives for which different people care for children can vary greatly. Carers are often parents who cannot have children themselves, or who want to bring a child into the family who does not have a family of his or her own. Foster carers are usually people who want to help so-called ‘unadoptable’ children. This may be a situation where the child is not legally available or where an adoptive parent has not been found for a long time. Transitional foster care often deals with situations where it is clear that the child will soon be legally free and it is more appropriate for the child to spend this time out of the institution, or in acute situations where the legal situation is unclear and there are temporary foster carers until it is resolved.
In the case of guardianship, the aim is to achieve a situation that is as close as possible to the original family. Typically, therefore, children are placed with couples who are a reasonable age apart from the child, corresponding to the age difference between the biological parents and the children. Single parents are therefore less likely to adopt a child, and this option is still legally prohibited for same-sex couples, although both variants of the family model are encountered in practice. Foster parents are no longer subject to such strict requirements. Although it is always recommended to place a child with a couple, as fostering itself brings a number of challenges, it is not a requirement. Similarly, we see foster carers who are already the age of the grandparents of the children they care for. And this is not a major obstacle either.
Are you and your partner considering adopting a child from an orphanage? Or does your partner want to adopt your child from a previous marriage? Find out all about adoption in our article.
Before adoption, the child must be freed from legal ties to the original parents (for example, they have disowned the child or had their parental rights removed). Subsequently, after the adoption , a parent-child relationship is established between the adopter and the adopted child. The adoptive parents therefore have parental responsibility, the child takes their surname and the child’s relationship with the original family ceases.
For children who are not legally free or who are unable to find an adoptive parent, the option of foster care is then offered. The foster parent has custody of the child and cares for him or her in a similar way to a parent. However, he or she has limited parental rights and needs parental consent or a court order to exercise them. Once foster care ends (typically when the child reaches the age of 18 or finishes his or her studies), there is no further legal relationship between the foster parent and the child.
Temporary care, as the name implies, creates only short-term relationships that cease once the situation is resolved. Both types of foster care are also linked to the foster carer’s entitlement to financial remuneration.
We have focused on the legal relations between foster parents and children and the specifics of foster care in our article.
In the introduction we also mentioned the person of the guardian and the ward. Let’s take a closer look at their role and relationship to the child.
Alternative family care provides children who cannot be cared for by their biological parents with a family environment instead of institutional care. It includes adoption, foster care and temporary foster care. Adoption gives adoptive parents full parental rights, while foster parents care for children who cannot be adopted and have only limited parental rights. Temporary foster care serves to bridge a period of uncertainty.
The legal framework consists of the Act on Social and Legal Protection of Children and the Act on Foster Care. The conditions for caring persons differ – adoptive parents should correspond to the model of the biological family, foster care is looser in this respect. In addition to these forms, there is guardianship and guardianship. A guardian protects the interests of the child in legal proceedings, a guardian takes care of the child if the parents die or have been deprived of parental responsibility.
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