A protest took place in front of the Bratislava III District Court on Tuesday to draw attention to what the organisers described as "shocking cases" involving children who were taken into care not only by the British authorities but also by those in Slovakia.
According to representatives of the Social Services Providers Association in Slovakia (APSSSR), who organised the protest, children from poor families in Slovakia have been placed in children's homes and substitute families without a proper examination of their situation and without sufficient evidence of abuse, often based only on a complaint made by a social worker and a subsequent court decision. This is frequently announced to the parents only after the children have already been taken away from them. The APSSSR representatives stated that there are 67 state-run and 21 non-state children's homes in Slovakia with the total capacity of around 5,000 places. “These children [who were taken into care] wouldn't have to end up in children's homes if the state helped poor families more. The state pays around €1,000 a month per child in a children's home. It would be better to support housing policy in order to allow children to be raised by their biological parents”, said APSSSR representatives. “Children are often put in the care of people who take them for purely acquisitive reasons. At the same time, children taken away from their biological families frequently don't remain in one professional family, but are passed on from one family to another, only so that the family receives benefits from the state”, said Dana Gaálová from the association. APSSSR wants to put forward systematic changes to the laws regulating professional child care in Slovakia.
