In 2023-2024, a team of researchers from organizations – members of the Childhood 2025 Coalition conducted research on the causes of separation of children from their families.
The research is part of the Childhood 2025 Coalition's long-term efforts to focus attention and priorities in national and local social, educational and mental health policies on the issue of children being separated from their parents as it presents a serious risk to children's development.
In this regard, a major focus of the Coalition's advocacy initiatives at present is the need to develop policies, measures and practices for effective prevention of child-family separation.
The study was conducted with the active participation of professionals from community-based alternative services led by these organizations. A wide range of professionals from other alternative services in the country were also involved in validating the findings of the analysis. The alternative services that participated in the study were the Family Type Accommodation Centres (FTA), Community Support Centres (CSC), Social Rehabilitation and Integration Centres (SRIC), foster families from the Foster Care Programmes (FC).
The tasks set by the research team included six areas of study:
(a) to describe the situations that lead to risks in families and trigger the intervention of the child protection system;
(b) to examine the ways in which children and families experience separation in the short and long term;
(c) critically examine how the child protection system identifies, assesses, moves, closes and follows up on cases of risk in children's families when separation is required;
(d) identify the attitudes of all those involved in the protection of children at risk with regard to separation and separation prevention;
(e) to examine at the national level what data exists and what additional data and analysis is needed in relation to prevention and services for children and adolescents separated from their parents and receiving services from the child protection system.
The final report is available in Bulgarian here.
