Care service providers

The government is obliged to develop appropriate child protection, social and family support services aiming to prevent all forms of violence against children and to protect, rehabilitate and socially reintegrate child victims.

Within decentralised systems, local authorities typically implement policy, acting as service provider. In any decentralisation process, the government retains clear responsibility and capacity for ensuring that obligations of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child are respected.

Does the national legal framework allow for subcontracting and/or -outsourcing alternative care services to commercial institutions or –companies?

 
 

Source: FRA, 2014

  Yes
  No

Key findings

  • In the majority of Member States the national legal framework allows national, regional and local authorities to outsource child protection services to the private sector and/or to subcontract private actors including civil society organisations.
  • Both state and non-state actors, such as civil society organisations and private institutions, and associations both for-profit and for not-for-profit, offer child protection services.
  • Civil society organisations are playing an increasingly important role, becoming service providers of key child protection services such as alternative care, which traditionally only state actors offered.
  • In many Member States, for-profit institutions offer alternative care services such as residential and foster care.
  • The increasing involvement of the private sector creates challenges linked primarily to potential conflicts of interests: the child’s best interests versus the private sector’s profit interests. In this case, effective monitoring is a key challenge.

In at least 18 Member States (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom) the national legal framework allows for subcontracting and/or outsourcing alternative care services to private-commercial institutions and companies.

In some Member States such as Finland, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom,  private–commercial institutions have an important role as service provider running a big share of alternative care settings. 

In other Members States, such as Bulgaria, Croatia and Lithuania, despite the existing legal provisions, in practise, up to now, alternative care services are subcontracted and/or outsourced only to non-profit institutions.