On July 18, 2016, the Public Defender of Georgia held a presentation of special reports on monitoring of foster care and reintegration services within the framework of the project supported by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) - "Strengthening the Public Defender's Centre for Child's Rights".

The reports reflect results of the monitoring carried out by the Centre for Child's Rights from 1 June 2015 to 1 June 2016 and the Public Defender's recommendations.

Within the monitoring, rights situation of 380 beneficiaries of foster care subprogram and 110 beneficiaries of reintegration service, as well as sessions of the Guardianship-Care Regional Councils, were examined.

The monitoring showed that it is necessary to essentially strengthen state policy and internal mechanisms in order to effectively protect the rights of foster care and reintegrated children.

By the Public Defender’s recommendation, the Government and responsible agencies should prepare special sub-programs in order to improve efficiency of foster care and reintegration processes; systemic and regular retraining of foster families should be carried out; attention should be given to strengthening of families and children involved in kinship foster care sub-program; awareness of reintegrated families should be raised for the purpose of prevention of violence, exploitation and other forms of ill-treatment; social condition of subprogram families living in relative poverty, especially in mountainous regions and remote villages, should be improved.

The Public Defender calls on the state and local government agencies to develop and manage a coordinated policy on foster care and reintegration and to implement the recommendations included in the special reports.

See the electronic version of the report