Subject: Informal interservice meeting on de-institutionalisation/transition to alternative or community care - standards

Document type: Web page copy

Publication date: 7 February 2012

From: TUITE Margaret (JUST)

Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2012 5:46 PM

To: TUITE Margaret (JUST); PARASKEVAS Marie-Anne (EMPL); TOTH Gabor (EMPL); HORKA Hana (SANCO); LISMANIS Ioannis (EMPL); PANAGOU Effrosyni (EMPL); ORTH Martin (EMPL); REKERTA Kestutis (EMPL); COTONE Annelisa (JUST); PAPAMICHALOPOULOU Lina (JUST); PECCHINI Annachiara (EMPL); DE SADELEER Katja (ELARG); URMOS Andor (REGIO); STAVINOHA Marek (JUST); ROMANOVIC Aleksandar (JUST); SCHEFTLEIN Juergen (SANCO); FAZI Elodie (EMPL); ADAMAITE Linda (EMPL); BENEDYKTOWICZ Artur (EMPL)

Subject: Informal interservice meeting on de-institutionalisation/transition to alternative or community care - standards

When: mardi 14 février 2012 10:00-11:00 (GMT+01:00) Brussels, Copenhagen, Madrid, Paris.

Where: HOME-JUST MEETING ROOM SCHENGEN

Invitees:

To: DG EMPL: E Fazi, M Paraskevas, Gabor Toth, Linda Adamaite, Programme Manager Latvia

Artur Benedyktowicz, Programme Manager Poland

Hana Horka, Jürgen Scheftlein, Unit Health Determinants, DG Health and Consumers

Ioannis Lismanis, Programme Manager Greece, DG EMPL

Effrosyni Panagou, Programme Manager Cyprus, DG EMPL

Marie-Anne Paraskevas, Principal Administrator, DG EMPL

Martin Orth, Programme Manager Slovakia, DG EMPL

Kestutis Rekerta, Programme Manager Lithuania, DG EMPL

Annelise Cotone, DG JUST

Lina Papamichalopoulou, DG JUST.D.4

Annachiara Pecchini, inclusion, fight against poverty DG EMPL

Katja De Sadeleer, DG ELARG

Andor Urmos, Seconded national expert, Policy Analyst, Thematic coord. and innovation, DG REGIO

DG JUST.C1 Rights of the child

Dear Colleagues,

In the context of de-institutionalisation or transition from institutions to alternative/community-based care, many DGs are involved, especially in terms of funding. A certain momentum has now been achieved and there is a big push to make rapid progress. We would like to ensure that in all of this work, minimum standards are adhered to by all concerned. We have had informal discussion with some NGOs on benchmarking certain standards and building on them, and taking them into the expert group currently chaired by Lumos.

You are therefore invited to a meeting of concerned DGs to ensure that everyone is aware of these standards and benchmarks and they can be built into funding programmes/objectives/strategies as and where appropriate. If we all adopt the standards and subscribe to them, it means they can be a baseline in calls for proposals, strategies, objective-setting, evaluating proposals and ensuring step-by-step progress. We want a common Commission baseline with regard to de-institutionalisation.

The NGOs that I have spoken with (SOS Children's Villages, Save the Children, Eurochild) in the context of my regular informal stakeholder consultations are in favour of such an approach. I hope that all DGs concerned can be represented at the meeting; this time slot seems to be the one that suits most of you. Please feel freel to forward this message to colleagues involved - I have taken as a starting list of invitees the participants at the December 2011 Lumos-chaired expert meeting on de-institutionalisation.

Regards,

Margaret

Relevant reference documents and standards:

Reference documents

UN Convention on the rights of the child (notably Article 3.3)

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/pdf/crc.pdf

UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (Article 19 in particular)

http://www.un.org/disabilities/documents/convention/convoptprot-e.pdf

Report of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on the Transition from Institutional to Community-based Care:

http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?langId=en&catId=89&newsId=614&furtherNews=yes

COM (2011)615 final of 6.10.2011 (Commission Proposal for a REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL laying down common provisions on the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund, the Cohesion Fund, the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development and the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund covered by the Common Strategic Framework and laying down general provisions on the European Regional Development Fund, the European Social Fund and the Cohesion Fund and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1083/2006).

www.ec.europa.eu/esf/BlobServlet?docId=233&langId=en

UN Guidelines for the alternative care of children - a United Nations framework

http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/children/childrenincare/SOS-ISS%20Guidelines%20Publication.pdf

Quality4Children Standards for out-of-home childcare in Europe (and see also the toolkit)

http://www.quality4children.info/navigation/cms,id,31,nodeid,31,_language,en.html

(There's also a comparison by Nigel Cantwell of Q4C and the UN Guidelines)

Council of Europe recommendation on children living in residential institutions (2005) and follow-up:

http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/familypolicy/enfance/resinstitutions_en.asp

Book for children and young people in care: discover your rights!

http://www.coe.int/t/dg3/children/childrenincare/C&YP%20IN%20CARE-ANGLAIS(web).pdf

SOS Children's villages: Quality care counts

http://www.sos-childrensvillages.org/About-us/Library/Pages/Quality-Care-Counts.aspx