Publication details
Family Solidarity
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The Czech Republic faces a lot of problems typical for the post-communist countries: a very high number of children born out of wedlock, fatherless children, high divorce rate, domestic violence, etc. Besides that, it is a well-known fact that the Czech Republic inherited a child protection system that placed excessive reliance on institutional care as a means of looking after children unable to remain with their parents in the long or short-term perspectives. Despite the collapse of the communist regime and its ideology, the number of children living in institutional care is now higher in many parts of the Czech Republic than it used to be the case before 1989. It is a sad reality that parents abandon very often their children or place them voluntarily into institutional care because of poverty caused by very low incomes or unemployment, due to housing problems, etc. As the Czech Republic has been broadly criticized for a bad family policy, the Government started to deal with the above mentioned problems and tried to help the poor families with children. Besides the external support (social benefits, taxation, etc.), the focus has been concentrated on the intrafamiliar support based on family law, especially on the effective enforcement of maintenance duty among close relatives and on new a considering of foster care with an active participation of the children’ parents, grandparents and other close relatives. |
| Related projects: |