Quality4Children: nieuws over: de standaards voor opvang van uithuis geplaatste kinderen

Newsletter 7/2008
A year since the Q4C Standards launch
“On 13 June 2007, SOS-Kinderdorf International, IFCO and FICE presented the Q4C standards for European out-of-home child care. The presentation took place at the European Parliament”.
We hope to give you a clear overview of what Q4C and FICE, IFCO and SOS Children’s Villages have reached since last summer.

Achievements at international level
The day after the presentation of the Q4C Standards, the Coordination Team (CT) was created; One of the CT projects was to create a toolkit for the support of people working with Q4C (implementation or advocacy activities). This Q4C toolkit is a compilation of documents, strategic suggestions and articles on the project, which together aim to support the Q4C activities at a national level.
A group of young people who were actively involved in Q4C during the entire process had the idea to develop an internet platform with the aim to give youth in care the chance to communicate and interact (similar to Facebook or Myspace). This website is Power4Youth, and has, ever since its launch, reached members from over 20 countries (more info under: www.power4youth.eu).

On the Q4C website, you can find 20 different language versions of the Q4C standards, further versions are under way! (see www.quality4children.info).

As for regions outside Europe: SOS Children’s Villages in Latin America and RELAF (IFCO Latin America) will, in cooperation with the Inter-American Children’s Institute and Redlamyc, conduct the entire Q4C process in Latin America.
Furthermore, the Tasmanian Department of Health and Human Services (Australia) has expressed its interest in the Q4C Standards, and the Vancouver Aboriginal Child and Family Services Society (Canada) has consulted the Q4C CT on child protection issues.

Achievements at a national level
The achievements at a national level have had different kinds of impact: Implementation of the standards by the State as well as cooperation with governments and Universities:
The Q4C Standards have been slightly modified by the Q4C national team (IFCO) in Malta and soon will become the Maltese National Standards for Residential Care.
After cooperation between the CT and the University of Luxemburg, SOS Children’s Villages Luxemburg has been constantly cooperating with the University in developing national standards in a project of the Government.
SOS Children’s Villages Azerbaijan was contacted by the Ministry of Education to present the Q4C Standards at a conference on de-institutionalisation and the Azerbaijani version of the Q4C Standards was presented there. See www.quality4children.info for information on implementation and advocacy activities in countries such as Austria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia and Spain.

More can be found at: