Quality4 Children Standards for Out-of-Home Child Care in Europe

SOS Children’s Villages, IFCO (International Foster Care Organisation) and FICE (Fédération Internationale des Communautés Educatives), developed a set of quality standards for out-of-home child and youth care in Europe seeking to improve the care situation for hundreds of thousands of concerned young people. This publication presents the Q4C project and the resulting quality standards for out-of-home childcare in Europe. A total of 32 European countries participated in the project. There are 18 standards, which have been divided into three chapters: Decision-making and admission process, Care-taking process and Leaving-care process. These standards could never have been developed without the valuable participation of 163 children and young adults, 36 biological parents, 106 caregivers and 24 extended family members, lawyers and government representatives from across Europe.