A new app places the improvement of child and adolescent rights in foster homes at the top of the agenda to mark the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child on the 20th of November 2019. Given the serious cases of child abuse that took place in a foster home at a campsite in Lügde the FosterCare joint project's app has clearly come at just the right time. The app is a way to provide young people in foster families with information and to offer them a point of contact. Experiences in other projects have shown that new ways of reaching young people are needed, especially in potentially stressful situations. They can use the app to receive information and contact the project team members via a messenger function and talk about their experiences. The affected persons will be referred to counselling centres when necessary. The joint project will continue until the end of 2020 and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the framework of the "Research on sexualised violence against children and young people in educational contexts” funding line.
The app augments the free nationwide FosterCare hotline already provided by the project team under the number 0800 98 00 200. There, young people in foster families can already share their experiences and ideas about what constitutes a good foster family and what can strengthen their rights of protection, participation and appeal free of charge. Using these different approaches, the research association wants to collect and evaluate experiences, points of view and the wishes of the young people to subsequently work out which protection concepts are needed in connection with foster care.
Little research has been done to date into the potential risks for young people in foster families. So far, only individual measures for better protection have been found in practice, but no coordinated concepts or procedures for all stakeholders within the foster child care infrastructure. The joint FosterCare project is intended to help close these gaps. Field-specific protection concepts are being developed for foster child care on the basis of the experiences of young people, foster families, families of origin and specialists. To this end, practical research is being carried out and group discussions held with all stakeholders at the Ulm University Hospital, Landshut University of Applied Sciences and the University of Hildesheim. Based on the results, recommendations for action will be developed in conjunction with key sector policy makers.
In this anniversary year of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the FosterCare joint project is making a much needed contribution to strengthening the personal rights of young people in foster care through concepts for protection. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child grants rights to education, information and transparency to all young people in all matters that concern them, and also guarantees the opportunity to lodge complaints and have a say in official proceedings. Therefore, enforcing these children's rights in the field of foster child care should finally be on the agenda.
