The PRIDE Model of Practice, an Approch to Develop Professional Skills in Aria of Alternative Care

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), the UN guidelines on alternative care for Children, the European Union Agenda on child rights, all seek to prevent the unneccesary separation of children and parents. In the last decades Balkan countries as signatories of the CRC convention, trying to fulfill the conditions for adequate family life of children at risk, parallel with the implementation of de-institutionalization process of the child protection system in these areas.

However family and community based care is preferred , it is not always possible and social services needs to ‘outsource’ the safety and well being to another family who is virtually unknown. To secure safe placements of children we use the PRIDE Model of Practice as a comprehensive preparation and assesment program that develops interested citizens to become well informed foster parents as team members in the child protection system. At the same time PRIDE Model of Practice enables the development of competencies of the professionals, from recruitment to ongoing support during the whole foster care process.

This originaly US-based program (CWLA) is over the past decennia implemented in many European countries. The Dutch Foundation OKS played an instrumental role in developing Master Trainer Teams who can take on the implementation of this approach in their countries.

By the “Balkan experience”, PRIDE model of practice, as a body of knowledge and training program, changed and improved system of child and foster care in the region. In this workshop, we want to highlight that the PRIDE training and assessment process triggered quite some changes in the development and understanding of the child care system in the Balkans.