Country: Serbia

Donor: MAE (Ministero degli Affari Esteri)

Period: 9 August ’10 – 9 August ‘12

Area of interest: deinstitutionalization of minors with disabilities

Local Partners: UNICEF Serbia

Aim:  to promote social inclusion in Serbia and the right to live or to be assigned to an appropriate familiar environment, to promote Serbian social welfare in order to facilitate the on-going deinstitutionalization process.

The specific aim is to boost and strengthen the local services network as well as professionals’ competencies and skills in the social field. This change is finalized to create alternative solutions for social inclusion and deinstitutionalization of minors with disabilities in the districts of Nis, Pirot, Jablanica and Toplica.

Beneficiaries: 25 municipalities, totaling 830.000 people. About 127 children, 25 centers for Social Work (one for each municipality) with 224 operators (statewide average is 2,7 social operators every 10.000 inhabitants). The project will be addressed especially to CLS managers and social operators, involved in the reintegration of children with foster families and biological families of children hosted in residential structures. After an initial assessment, the following CLS have been defined:

  • Kulina’s Institute, where adults and minors have been institutionalized; coherently with structure reformation plan, children section has been announced to close;
  • Instituted for minors without parental protection of the areas of Nis’ and Aleksinac’s, where now minors without parents and mild disabilities have been hosted. The reformation plan deals with the transformation in small residentials structures hosting minors, who come from Kulina and communitarian services dedicated to the biological and foster families of minors with disabilities.

At the end of 2011, a Foster Care center was built in NIS. The residential structures operators have been considered as the object of the project, aiming to create a joint between the residential structures, special schools, day centers, and Foster Center to improve what’s been done on minors.

Direct recipients:

  • CLS operators coming from the selected districts;
  • NIS Foster Center’s operators;
  • Communitarian services and residential institutes’ operators from the selected districts;
  • Children currently being hosted in residential structures and included in foster families;
  • Foster families;
  • Children lacking parental care, currently living in the residential structure of the selected area.

Indirect recipients:

  • Children with special needs and families living in the selected area;
  • The entire community.

Main targets:

  • Development of communitarian services for children with disabilities in Duško Radovic and Hristina Markišić’s institute;
  • Development of a network between the civil society and the institutions;
  • Empowerment of civil society (parents and volunteer organizations).

Expected Results:

  • Implementation of a professional and stakeholder networks coming from the social, medical and educational field dealing with minors with disabilities;
  • Learning of theoretical ground about case management, foster family, network and communitarian support;
  • Description and spreading of good practice in the social field, in order to implement communitarian services; from local to national de-i.