The Potential of Institutions for Children without Parental Care: the Perspective of the Institutional Caregivers

The best interest of the child should at all times be the primary guiding principle for the experts deciding matters of care. This ought to be implemented when the child is within the family, when the child is removed from the family, placed in institutional care, and when the child leaves the institutional care system. With the aim of contributing to the improvement of institutional care for children, and with the guiding principle of the child's best interest, we have conducted a research project that included institutional caregivers (N=71) from all of Croatia's 14 public institutions for children without parental care. The aim of the project was to determine the potential held by these institutions and the possibility of improving institutional care for children, with a view to preserve the best interest of the child, and from the point of view of the institutional caregiver. The data were collected by means of an open-ended questionnaire, and were processed using qualitative thematic analysis. The findings indicate that the institutional caregivers recognize certain positive aspects of the psychosocial climate i.e. the state of interpersonal affairs, the institution's space and activities, the institution's surroundings and its community as potential sources of improvement of care which could could be activated and could thus enhance the quality of provided care. Additionally, the institutional caregivers consider their working conditions as an area that requires improvement, as it would contribute to the provision of high-quality professional care and support to the children in their custody. Finally, there ought to be more work in the areas of transforming the institutions into the "family-like" type of accommodation, and in the general quality of the institutional psychosocial climate. All of this ought to be achieved keeping in mind the key aim of preserving the best interest of the child which is being placed into institutional care.