Meetings and events

Eurochild's fifth Annual Conference 2008 took place on 5-7 November in Budapest, under the title "Including Children: a child rights approach to child well-being". It was attended by almost 200 international and Hungarian participants, including young people from 4 countries.

Eurochild's conference was the circumstance to also discuss about care-leavers and their paths towards independence in a specific workshop. What emerged has been the importance of facing at European level social inclusion of those out-of-family young people.

In particular, the first and most significant piece of evidence concerning an analysis about care-leavers is the lack of information and data about them. Disaggregated data (i.e. specifically on this social category) on care-leavers is almost non-existent, and therefore there are also few traces of the young people once they leave the childhood protection system.

Actions and policies (at both central and local) level addressing this social category at a strong risk of social exclusion  are also minimal  and the initiatives addressing them specifically by centres for work, housing or vocational training at local level  are also insufficient. It is very often the private social sector that deals with these young people with actions which are nevertheless limited and frequently of reduced sustainability.

In addition, there is evidence of the fragmentary nature of competences in the social protection system and the lack of clear procedures for specific actions. In short, there is a shortage of specific social programmes, as is clear to young people without families themselves, but not so clear to the operators and people with responsibilities in the sectors concerned who consider the problem only if directly asked.

Lastly, it is clear how the age at which young people are asked to become independent is very often inadequate both with regard to their peers and considering the scarcity of initiatives aimed at promoting their independence in the last few years of their residence in a Care Centre.

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