KIHASA has published the May issue of the Health and Welfare Policy Forum, No. 331. This issue focuses on promoting family-type care for children in out-of-home care. (The articles are available for download here.)

SUMMARY OF THE FOREWORD

Residential facility care is considered to have a negative impact in the long term on the overall development of children in out-of-home care. Children who require out-of-home care are supposed, in principle, to be placed in family-type care settings. However, as of 2022, 57.3 percent of children in out-of-home care were living in residential facilities, a rate considered far too high by comparison with many other countries. Thus, the government set out in 2022 to pursue the 'roadmap to deinstitutionalizing out-of-home care.' The Roadmap contains various objectives, key among which are: strengthening the infrastructure for family-type care; enhancing support for the natural families of children in out-of-home care, with a view to facilitating their reunification; and bringing functional changes in and specializing foster care facilities. The government's move toward deinstitutionalizing out-of-home care is significant in that it represents the first of its kind to be pursued as a national agenda item. With the full-scale implementation of this initiative approaching, now is a time that merits assessments of the issues and discussions on policy options. In the May issue of the Health and Welfare Policy Forum, we look into issues around and the state of affairs with home-based care for children living separated from their families of origin. We present our analysis of family-based care as experienced and perceived by youth who, now on their way to independent living, had spent part of their childhood in foster family settings. We also review the pilot scheme implemented earlier for downsizing of foster care facilities and draw policy implications for improvement. Our discussions extend to issues concerning the deinstitutionalization of adolescents in out-of-home placements, whom the current version of the Roadmap leaves unaddressed, and argue that they should be included, along with children in out-of-home care, in the framework of the Roadmap down the line.

MONTHLY FOCUS: Promoting Family-Type Care for Children in Out-of-Home Care

"Challenges and Policy Implications for Expanding Family-Based Care for Children in Out-of-Home Care," Lee Juyeon, KIHASA

In Korea, more children in out-of-home care are living in residential facilities than in family-type care settings. The rate of out-of-home care children living in residential facilities remains far too high by international standards. In response, the government embarked on the initiative of deinstitutionalizing out-of-home care and promoting family-type care in 2022. In this article, I examine issues facing the promotion of foster family placements as a representiative family-type care alternative and discuss what needs to be done to improve the situation. I base my account on a literature review of relevant reports, policy notes, and statistical data, as well as interviews with local-level child care officers, care management workers at foster care placement support centers, and foster parents.

"Foster Care Experiences of Youth in Preparation for Independent Living and Their Policy Implications," Lee Jungeun & Lee Juyeon, KIHASA

Drawing on interviews with youth living on their own who have had firsthand experience growing up in foster family settings, this article identifies issues in foster care that need addressing and discusses what needs to be done to better support the healthy development of foster care children. The interviewees' experiences cover various aspects of foster care life: placement with foster families, transitioning between families, access to placement support and case management services (or lack thereof), returning to their biological families, and navigating crisis situations. We discuss the issues and limitations of the current foster family system and present the need for establishing, as part of case managment, monitoring of changes in the lives of children in foster care and enhancing accessibility to support services.

"Alternative Care to Family-Based Care for Children in Out-of-Home Care: Experiences and Challenges," Lim Sung Eun, KIHASA

Amid the changing characteristics of children in out-of-home care and the changing trends in child policies within and outside the country, child welfare facilities in Korea have been called upon to move toward downsizing and deinstitutionalization. To further this progress, the government is proceeding with policies aimed at promoting family-type care settings where out-of-home care children can grow in a family-like living environment. However, what 'family-like living environment' in foster care means remains subject to different interpretations. Moreover, as the necessity of and dependency on residential-facility-based care persist, the transition to family-type care remains in progress. In this light, this paper examines earlier attempts at downsizing foster care facilities as a move toward family-type care, discuss group-home programs that aim ultimately to return children back to their own families, and draw implications from policy.

"Challenges and Issues Concerning the Deinstitutionalization of Out-of-Home Care for Adolescents," Kim Heejin, SungKonghoe University Research Institute of Social Sciences

The policy of deinstitutionalization of out-of-home care has come to the fore as the list of national tasks announced in July 2022 included as one of its items the 'preparation of a roadmap' to guide the policy. Such progress is underpinned by the national focus on 'the rights of the child', which stands as a testament to the influence of the UN's reviews and recommendations of Korea's sixth and seventh periodic reports on the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, the deinstitutionalization process as it is pursued now is limited in that it concerns transferring only children placed in child welfare facilities pursuant to the Child Welfare Act to family-type care settings. In this article, I examine the background against which the 'plan for deinstitutionalization of children in out-of-home care' was developed, and consider what significance these efforts as a national agenda have as means and ends of a paradigm shift in the rights of the child. I also essay a positive interpretation of 'children in out-of-home care' and 'deinstitutionalization' and argue in the process that the roadmap should broaden to include adolescents in out-of-home care as well.

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