Cooperative Development of Quality Standards for Professional Out-of-home Care of Children and Youth in Austria

In 2017 FICE Austria started a project in cooperation with 20 organisations of the child protection field for the development of quality standards for the professional out-of-home care of children and youth in so-called social pedagogical facilities in Austria. Despite this high number of children cared in these facilities (about 8.400 in 2017), there are still no nationwide quality standards available. One of the main reasons for this lack is the federal structure in Austria which allows the federal provinces to implement their own quality standards and quality control mechanisms. Thus, children and youth in different provinces face different care conditions. Against this background the project aimed to define quality standards for facilities for all provinces of Austria. The standards focus on the level of care processes and are based on the international children’s rights as well as on the specific national law regulations in Austria. They offer social pedagogic facilities a framework for quality development and self-assessment. In addition, they can be used as a set of verifiable aims and criteria that allow controlling bodies to assess the quality of the services. As these standards are (so far) a non-binding instrument, their implementation depends in the first instance on the shared commitment of private organizations, controlling bodies and child protection services. In the lecture key aspects of the standards are presented. In addition, the question of necessary political processes relevant for a nation-wide recognition of these standards is addressed.