Maria Herczog has started working as the senior technical advisor of Better Care Network in November 2015. She is an economist and a sociologist with over 35 years of experience in teaching at university courses and in vocational training courses, mainly social workers and other helping professionals and doing research in family matters, child protection, child welfare. Maria has been playing an important role in the child protection reforms of Hungary and other transition coutnries in Central and Eastern Europe during the last almost three decades in different capacities, as a temporary scientific advisor of UNICEF, WHO, Council of Europe, national governments, and the EU. She has been also active in the building of the civil society in the CEE region, becoming the first Eastern European member of the executive board of IFSW for 6 years, later a board member of IFCO for two years. As a member representing the civil society in the EU Economic and Social Committee and a member of the Hungarian Economic and Social Alliance for 6 years Maria took an active role to draw the attention on the complexity of child related issues and the child rights perspective, just like as a member of the Advisory Board of the Equal Opportunities Authority for 6 years in Hungary, She was elected to the UNCRC Committee in 2006 and reelected in 2010, where she was the rapporteur of the Committee for the last 2 years.
A founding member of Eurochild on behalf of the Family, Child, Youth Association operating in Hungary with her different leadership roles since 1993. She has been working as an elected member of the Management Board in 2009, and as president since 2010 in Eurochild. Maria has written several books, book chapters, articles on child welfare and child protection, partly based on her national and international research projects, mostly on children deprived of family care, on the child protection system, child abuse and neglect and on alternative techniques to be used to tackle violence, abuse, conflicts.
She has been very active in the media, not only a regualr speaker, expert in different media programs in Hungary and abroad, but also as an editor and presenter of a television program on human ecology, family and child issues.
Maria holds an MA in Economics from Karl Marx University of Economics, a Ph.D. (Csc) in Sociology from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and she was habilitating at the University of Pecs, Hungary.
Stela Grigoras (Ph.D.), President of the International Foster Care Organisation (2003-2011, 2015-present), Minister of Labour, Social Protection and Family of the Republic of Moldova. In her previous positions, Stela has been CEO of Partnerships for Every Child in Moldova (2012-2016) and ran EveryChild’s office in Moldova (2000-2011).
Her vast experience in developing and managing large social welfare in childcare national reform programs and projects has greatly contributed towards the Moldovan government overhauling its entire social care system. Throughout her professional career, Stela led on supporting the local and national governments in planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating transformation and closure of the large-scale residential institutions, as well as planning and delivering community-based social services for children and families; implementing inclusive education programmes, innovative early intervention programmes, mechanisms for inter-sectoral cooperation on cases of child abuse, neglect and exploitation. Stela and the high profile international team at Partnerships For Every Child Moldova have been also instrumental in supporting the national government in developing and revising primary and secondary legislation in child care and child protection in the Republic of Moldova.
