Publications

This paper looks at how the transition from the planned to the free market economy has altered the nature of state protective child care provision in Central and Eastern Europe. The old systems were run according to an underlying state ideology that stressed an insensitive ‘medical model’ of care. This ‘treatment’ was often a worse fate than the deprived contexts from which the children had been removed. But matters have little improved since the collapse of the old regimes. The economic, political, moral and spiritual ramifications of the rapid transition have led to further social unravelling. And children have borne the brunt of its effects.