2023-10-07 10:38:35
Comments endorsed by Guy De Backer, director of Alternatives Familiales, president and spokesperson for the Federation of Host Families. “Foster families change children’s lives“, he assures. “It’s very obvious. We see that a child taken care of quickly by a professional host familygresses, is stable and manages to create a secure attachment bond.“According to him, children who stay with their original family due to lack of space”live in hell.“
However, more and more children and adolescents are forced to experience this hell today. According to the Federation of Family Reception Support Services, nearly 7,000 children were separated from their parents more or at least long term in 2023 and a little more than 4,000 of them found themselves in foster families.
An increase that we owe, among other things, to the forced confinements of the health crisis, said Nicolas Tzanetatos (MR), deputy of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and president of the Youth Aid Commission, in “QR le Débat”. “We receive support requests every day”, declares Guy De Backer. “But there is a huge shortage of host families.“
“We are looking for a family for a child, not a child for a family“
In Belgium, there are three types of reception: emergency reception (between 15 and 45 days), short-term reception (from 3 to 9 months) and long-term reception (one year renewable for as long as times as necessary).
There are also three types of host families: intra-family host families (the uncle, aunt or even the sister of the child concerned), host families from the extended network (the teacher, the neighbor …) and the selected host families (who do not know the child). It is on this last point that we will concentrate.
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