SKILLED SERVICE HOURS IN THE PROFESSIONAL CHILD CARE –FLEXIBILITY ANDSOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY

Abstract

Actual life-oriented approach (You can not learn to swim without
going into the water)
Resources-oriented approach(Strengths- to recognize and develop them)
Solution-oriented approach(Find solutions - „here“ and „now“)
(EJO-2009 Betreutes Wohnen n. Fachleistungsstunden 3.6. in
www.jugendhilfeobernjesa.
de/info/download/leistungsbeschreibungen/EJO_3_6_FlexH_Fachleistungss
tunde.pdf)
On the way to reform and to improve the child caresystem Romania developed in the last
years a long range of specialised institutions and bodies. The main idea was to improve the
system in a way that will make it able to take into consideration the main European trends and
European methodologies, but simultaneously also the specificity of the local and regional
structures, mentalities and historical developments and that will make it able to face some of
the specific economic, financial and social challenges of the Romanianpresent day society.
Despite some difficulties (most of them as a result of a chronically lack of specialists and
practitioners – care workers, care takers, pedagogues, educators), the classical
institutionalised childcare knew a strong decrease and many of still existing formal care
institutions changed not only the name (from “home for children†to the insipid an uninspired
“placement centresâ€) but also their “traditionalâ€organisation (based on rigid structures and
rigorously organised day cycles) and their way of working with the institutionalised children
and young people.
One of the main witnessed trends was the interest to introduce into the daily practice
more flexibility and to find care measures and care work-patterns that are more appropriate to
the actual needs of the child and to its quotidian life. Through the additional specialist hours
there should be increased the support for young people with additional needs in terms of
individually contracted hours of child and youth services.
The paper presents some possibilities of increasing the efficiency of the care work
through a flexible professional care setting, respectively through the so-called “skilled service
hoursâ€and also some models and patterns of action. Based on the long experience accumulated
in the German child-care system, the paper details some of the premises, of the functioning
conditions, of the strengths and weaknesses of this way of structuring and implementing care
interventions and of making them increasingly efficient.