After the first version of the Child Care Ordinance (KiBeV) was scorned by GeCobi, politicians and the public, the Federal Council submitted a new text for consultation in autumn 2010. Although this is a lot better, it still has glaring weaknesses. We have commented on this in the consultation process.
clearly rejected the Federal Council's first proposal for various reasons . Children removed from their parents should end up in the hands of placement organizations. They would have actually taken over the educational authority for them. We also rejected the idea that childcare outside the family would become a playground for bureaucrats, which was also rejected by large sections of the public.
In principle, the present draft represents a significant improvement over its predecessor. However, we do not agree with the Federal Council with regard to the care of children outside of the family. It is fundamentally the responsibility of parents with custody to provide for the care of their children. They should also be able to decide freely who they leave their child to look after.
With regard to the organization of foster children, due to the sad experiences with the fate of contract children, we are very surprised that the question of the employment of children and young people is not mentioned at all in the draft regulation. There is an urgent need for regulation here. In addition, we are firmly of the opinion that foster parents need and should receive appropriate training oriented towards practical issues for their very demanding job. This is a basic quality feature for dealing with often 'difficult' children and young people. When the state intervenes so massively in the fundamental rights of the family and takes away their children from parents, it also has to ensure that they are actually better off in the new place than they were with their parents.
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