Since the Law on foster care in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH) came into force, the Center for Social Work in Mostar has been doing foster care work very well, and we have fewer and fewer children placed in the institution, Janja Milinkovic, inspector of social protection, civilian victims of war and protection of families with children in Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (HNC), said in an interview.
”In the HNC, we now have about twenty children in foster care, some related, some in the one where we give the child to another family that is not related to the child. Some of the children who were in foster families are in the process of adoption which has not yet been completed but has been started and we have a lot of children who have been adopted,” Milinkovic emphasized.
In addition to all that, she adds, prejudices against the Romani children’s nationality have also been overcome in the HNC.
”What I have to be proud of in this canton is that we have overcome prejudices against Romani children and recently we have a lot of Romani children who have been placed in foster families, and a lot of them have been adopted,” she claimed.
Speaking about possible abuses, Milinkovic says that for now the control is carried out by centers for social work, but that she, as an inspector, believes that the control should be much greater, explaining that it is not possible to come and control a child in the family, while in Sweden, for example, you can enter a family and observe for several hours how the family behaves or how the child has adjusted.
”For now, the center controls the placement of a child in a foster family, and inspection supervision is carried out in the center. Of course, through the documentation, you can invite the child or family to the Center, but not to the house where the child is placed, with the fact that they undergo a control before they come to the education and during the education, the educators go to the family to see all the conditions and possibilities and they are obliged to deliver regular reports on the children’s progress,” says the inspector.
E.Dz.
