Local services
The Family and Child Welfare Center of the County City of Debrecen organised an annual detection and signalling system professional conference at the centre’s headquarters on the 23rd of February, 2024. The operation of the detection and signalling network helps to identify possible causes of children’s vulnerability.
The protection of children is the task and responsibility not only of the actors in the child protection system, but also, in a broad sense, of all professionals working professionally with children and of all those who see the fate of the child, regardless of whether the child lives in his or her own family or is in child protection care. The City of Debrecen places great emphasis on strengthening the functioning of the detection and signalling system in order to ensure that children at risk are detected and reported on time, and that domestic violence and child abuse do not remain a private matter for the family, and that the necessary assistance and intervention by professionals is provided in a timely manner. In accordance with the practice of the past years, based on the answers to the questions in the questionnaires sent to the signalling system members,institution maintainers, public education institutions, health care providers, authorities, the experiences are summarised and proposals are made in order to operate the detection and signalling system network more efficiently. After the annual professional meeting, the Family and Child Welfare Center of the Debrecen County Municipality is preparing a warning system action plan until the 31st of March, 2024.
At the conference Diána Széles, Deputy Mayor of Debrecen, welcomed the participants. As she said among others, there are a lot of parents in our country who need help to care for their children. This help can be provided by those who work in child protection and childcare institutions, but, as the Deputy Mayor stressed, it is first and foremost the duty of parents to care for and educate their children.Institutional systems have a role to play from the point at which they see that something is wrong in families. The Centre for Family and Child Welfare of Debrecen County Municipality covers nearly 40,000 children, and the Centre is aware of the problems affecting some of these children.And this is the merit of the detection and signalling system network, for which Diána Széles expressed her thanks. The signs make it possible to prevent many serious problems, but at the same time, the major difficulties that have already developed must also be dealt with, and this is possible with joint efforts, because Debrecen has a very broad system of care institutions with dedicated, cooperative associates. The staff of the Mayor’s Office and the municipal institutions together with professionals from other child protection institutions work to ensure that children in Debrecen are safe and to help parents in raising their children. This is a challenge for everyone, but by working together, professionals can find answers to the problems. Debrecen is a caring city that keeps children safe.
Ibolya Aurélia Orosz, Head of the Family and Child Welfare Centre of the Debrecen County Municipality (DMJV), gave a presentation on the activities of her institution and its partner organisations of the past year. As she said in her introduction, this time they would like to raise the problems children are facing not only from the point of view of social professionals, but also from the point of view of teachers, and to encourage everyone to think together in order to find solutions. In this spirit, working groups will be set up later, so this meeting is now the starting point of a process. Ibolya Aurélia Orosz then stressed that all members of the signalling system are personally responsible, aware of their criminal liability to ensure that the Family and Child Welfare Centre receives reports of problems they have encountered. In Debrecen, the referral system works well and everyone feels the responsibility that comes with it. In 2023, the DMJV Family and Child Welfare Centre took on the responsibility of providing temporary care for families and children, which made it easier to find solutions in problematic situations and to help families and children.In 2023, 12 families and 20 children were provided with help and perspective in the framework of temporary care. Minor children can also be placed in temporary care for 3 days on their own initiative.
In addition to the DMJV Family and Child Welfare Centre in Debrecen, the Héra Family and Child Welfare Service and the Family and Child Welfare Service of the Forrás Spiritual Help Centre are active in this field, in close cooperation with each other. Forrás also provides psychological counselling. The head of the institution explained the problems that families are typically dealing with: child-rearing, financial and livelihood problems, family relationship conflicts, peer conflicts, peer and domestic abuse, domestic neglect.
Recent experience shows that there has been a notable and significant increase in the number of peer conflicts. There is a great need to report discovered abuses. The Family and Child Welfare Centre has a special service, the Parent-Child Contact Duty, which operates on Fridays and Saturdays and is in increasing demand, with increasingly difficult cases. They are also able to effectively help care for people with disabilities.
The Family and Child Welfare Centre of the DMJV has a very good relationship with the Debrecen Charity Board and the Debrecen Institute of Primary Care and Health Promotion (Daefi) in the implementation of various programmes and awareness-raising lectures.
Among the invited speakers at the meeting, psychologist Anna Versényi talked about the difficulties faced by school professionals, clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, psychoanalyst candidate Annamária Tari talked about school abuse and online bullying, and Vanda Gábor-Vígh, mediator of the Family and Child Welfare Center of the County of Debrecen, talked about school mediation.
Source: debrecen.hu
