There is no doubt that institutionalisation does tremendous damage to children’s health and development.

Luckily, there has been significant progress to move away from institutionalisation, and instead support families to avoid separation by developing foster care and other alternatives.

Unfortunately, this somehow seems not to apply to children with disabilities.

In many countries, children with disabilities continue to be institutionalised and today represent the majority of children remaining in institutions.

“In a number of European States, children with disabilities are disproportionately more likely to be placed in institutional care than their non-disabled peers and appear far less likely to benefit from efforts to affect a transition from institutional to family-based care.“

The Academic Network of European Disability Experts report

Read my article for Apolitical in full here (published 30 September 2019).

You can also read it here in Czech, English, French, German, Italian or Spanish.