Foster care system to be overhauled

Thousands of children are in care in Switzerland SF

The government has announced it will take a closer look at the 30-year-old regulations governing foster care in Switzerland.

Swiss cantons – which are in charge of carrying out fostering – have called for clearer standards and modernisation. Their calls are backed by a leading Swiss foster care organisation.

The justice ministry has been charged with looking into the cantons’ concerns and seeing whether an overhaul of the Foster Children Ordinance is necessary, the ministry announced earlier this month.

“[The ordinance] dates from 1977, which means a lot has changed since and there were concerns that it might be important to adapt it to the modern day, or at least certain rules in it,” Judith Wyder, a lawyer specialising in family issues at the ministry, told swissinfo.

The current ordinance sets out guidelines on fostering for the country’s 26 cantons.

But the cantons are free to organise foster care as they see fit, meaning that each has its own system.

“Cantons can be much more strict and protective of children than in the current ordinance but they cannot go below this level,” Wyder explained.

Improvement

Following an intervention in parliament, an independent expert was mandated in 2005 to draw up a report into the current state of foster care, which found many areas for improvement.

In their feedback to the report, most cantons said the legal framework was adequate but more concrete guidelines were needed to develop and ensure the professionalisation and development of fostering.

They added that the system needed to take into account changes in family structure and society, as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Switzerland ratified in 1997.

This, they argued, would ensure the satisfactory care, upbringing and education for the affected children.

One of their main concerns was that foster parents receive proper training and monitoring, said Wyder. Another was how to coordinate better when two cantons are involved in placing a child.

UN convention

For his part, Philipp Oechsli from Foster Children Action Switzerland, an organisation that campaigns on behalf of foster care, said his association welcomed the government’s decision and that it was time for the ordinance to be updated.

Oechsli said the UN convention set out a child’s right to have a say in foster care cases. It also implied that care outside the family should be subject to regulations and checks.

“This is still not the case [in Switzerland]; the current ordinance is too openly formulated,” he said.

Overall, he explained, Switzerland was still behind other countries: in English-speaking countries foster care standards were more complete and more regulated.

Another major problem acknowledged by all parties is that there were no full statistics on how many children were in care. Oechsli estimated there were around 13,000, with a third of these children staying with relatives.

Wyder said the ministry was looking into drawing up a statistical framework.

Scandals

Foster care in Switzerland has in the past been marred by several scandals. Tens of thousands of “Verdingkinder” (discarded children) from poor families were given away as cheap labour from the early 1800s until the 1950s.

And between 1926 and 1973 around 600 children from the Swiss gypsy community were taken from their parents and placed in care.

Oechsli says despite these less positive episodes it is important not to forget the importance of foster care as a whole.

“When families are ready to take children to live in their homes, this is very important because a sign comes from the midst of society that says we give children a place who don’t enjoy the same circumstances as our own children,” he said.

swissinfo, Isobel Leybold-Johnson

Discarded children

Verdingkinder, “discarded children”, were mostly the orphaned children of unmarried or divorced mothers and poor families.

Farmers received a maintenance fee from local authorities to provide food and shelter for the children. But many children were malnourished and overworked. Some were beaten or even sexually abused by their host families.

The child labour trade was managed by local authorities, some of which even held public auctions for the child workers. The practice continued until the 1950s.

Jenisch scandal

Between 1926 and 1972 a private foundation called Pro Juventute carried out a programme in which children of travellers or the Jensich gypsy minority in Switzerland were taken away from their parents and placed in children’s homes or with foster parents.

Around 600 children were taken under the “Kinder der Landstrasse” project. The authorities and society generally turned a blind eye.

A magazine started a campaign against the practice and in 1973 the programme was officially ended. In 1986 the then Swiss president apologised for the government’s support of the project. The Jenisch still has around 30,000 members, with 5,000 still living a nomadic or semi-nomadic existence.