Protect children’s rights living in institutional care in Greece from the coronavirus effects. Activate children’s foster care system.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic it is of urgent concern to transfer institutionalized children into foster care. We ask to activate children’s foster care system so that children living in institutional settings can be immediately placed into evaluated foster families. We ask that the necessary measurements are set and urgent procedures started for their safe and healthy transition at least during this crisis.
The coronavirus pandemic has led institutions to create a dangerous environment for the children they accommodate (for all children with or without disabilities). Sterilization, social isolation and restrictions in physical contact can be detrimental for children’s psychological, mental and cognitive development (which is already vulnerable). Because of all the protection measurements and restrictions that society has taken, children’s institutions are turning into hospital model institutions. These are highly dangerous and destructive for children (sterilization, lack of personalized care, lack of child-to-child contact, reduced staff and shifts, isolation from society, enclosure).
A family even if socially isolated and with no physical contact can offer greater protection and security to a child. Children in institutions are already traumatized and have suffered severe losses. They are a vulnerable population that we must protect from the psychosocial consequences of this crisis in our country.
Deinstitutionalization is at the center of the national strategy that the government hopes to implement but the children’s protection system seems to be frozen. The platform with evaluated foster parents exists and children can be placed in their care. We sign this petition to activate children’s foster care systems, to place children in already evaluated families and to take measurements for the security and health of children and foster parents. We ought to protect children from the corona virus and also from the trauma that is caused from the consequences of this pandemic in their environment.