Ibolya Veressné Gönczi Erzsébet Rákó
The study presents the results of a survey among those students of the Univer- sity of Debrecen who were raised in one of the institutions (community-based group home, children’s home, foster-parents) of the foster care system and who are currently beneficiaries of the aftercare programme, as well. Firstly, we attempt to overview the background circumstances of their acceptance into the institution of higher education, then, to overview the presentation of their family conditions, as well as their integration into university life.
The student body of the University of Debrecen consisted of 29551 stu- dents, according to data from 15th of March 2012, considering all departments together and all the study levels (higher educational training, college level, de- gree level, BSc, MA, the former 5-year long teacher training, further vocational education, PhD). There were 22716 full-time students, 6799 correspondence study, and 36 in distance learning and evening classes. With regard to funding, among the full-time students, 15688 received funding and 6466 students paid tuition fee. In what the correspondence courses are concerned, 1889 students were funded and 3721 paid tuition fee. From the students in the full-time pro- gramme, 6366 applied for regular social grants, out of which 3021 applications were accepted and these students received scholarships. 333 students out of the social grant beneficiaries were persons with multiple disadvantages and 1767 students were underprivileged. (the website of the University of Debre- cen, official statistics of the educational board of directors).1
According to our research permit, we reviewed all, i.e. more than six thou- sand applications, thus we found 10 students among the applicants who were raised in a certain form of the foster care system and who are still part of it. Out of 10 students, 8 lived with foster-parents, 2 lived in community-based group homes. Finally we were able to interview 7 students.2 Out of the 7 interviewees, 2 students lived in community-based group homes, 5 lived with their foster- parents.
The results of our exploratory research showed the way in which the disad- vantaged students reached higher education, the difficulties they encountered when they entered the institution and the issues that they currently face, as well.
1 We hereby thank József Borbás, the social reporter colleague working at the Student Relations
Directorship, for his help in accessing the statistical data and in technically carrying out the survey.
Along the research, the presentation of the literature in the field and the analysis of documents are followed by the recording, interpretation and analy- sis of structured interviews. While trying to contact the students, there were several problems to face, since it was rather characteristic for a part of the students to be “hidden.” In the period when the interviews were carried out, there were students who expressly refused the possibility of conversation, one student withdrew underway and another student was left out of the group due to his continuous reference to lack of time. One person accepted the interview only in written form, however we were personally present at the collection of data. Generally, the interviews lasted for about 1 – 1.5 hours and they were made in the period between April and June 2012.
The interview questions referred to family relationships, friends, lower secondary and secondary school studies, teacher-student relationships, high- er education careers and institutional/foster-parent environments. We record- ed the interviews at the each department where the students were enrolled in. The interviewees were students at legal studies, finance-accountancy, public health, medical imaging diagnostics, social pedagogy, pedagogy depart- ments.
Terms connected to the research
Disadvantaged condition, situation with multiple disadvantages
According to the definition from the 2011 given by law number ccIV on na- tional Higher education, the young people who are considered as students with a disadvantaged condition are those who, at the time of enrolment, were not at the age of 25 yet, who were officially registered under state protection due to family circumstances or a social situation during their secondary education, whose families were regularly granted the child protection allowance and were beneficiaries of regular child protection allowance, or who were raised in state institutions (§108 Art. 8.a).
The student with multiple disadvantages is the one whose legal guardian declared in the voluntary parental statement based on the child protection and guardianship administration act, that he/she had at the most an elementary educational qualification at the time when the student was at school age; the student in permanent guardianship is considered someone with multiple dis- advantages (§108 Art. 8.b).
The parents (both parents) of the multiple disadvantaged students have low school qualifications, at the most, they have graduated elementary school at the time when their child was at school age. nevertheless, the elemen- tary school qualification of the parents in itself is not sufficient for the status of multiple disadvantaged, the legal conditions of the disadvantaged situation also need to be met. namely, the legal phrasing supposes the existence of the disadvantaged condition as well, hence, apart from the school qualification of the parents, the entitlement to a regular child support allowance, the regis-
tration under state protection, the status of being under institutional care are needed.
Child protection care, state care
Among the terminology of child protection, the term “child in state care” has become obsolete, “a child/young person in child protection care” is used instead. In the scholarly literature, however, this wording is still found rather often. The “child in state care” as a notion was introduced together with the law number IV from 1952, which replaced the earlier term of the “abandoned child” and, at the same t ime, the possibility of being registered into foster care was expanded to all children under the age of 18. State care meant that the child was not brought up within the family, instead it came to him being part of a certain institutional placement. The 1997 child Protection Act no. XXXI uses the notion of child protection care in the cases of sustenance and protection based on state provisions (1997 XXXI. child Protection Act § 5). Those children are included here, who were taken into a temporary, transitional or permanent custody by the public guardianship authority. The public authority takes chil- dren into temporary custody when the family conditions endangers the growth of the child and if this endangered situation could not be terminated by ser- vices provided via basic sustenance, respectively by being registered into child protection. Along with temporary custody, the public guardianship authority places the child either at foster parents, or – if this is not possible – into a chil- dren’s home, or, if the condition of the child justifies this, he/she is placed into a home for handicapped and mentally ill people and a guardian (by profession) is appointed in order to help him. The parental custody rights of the parents of a child taken into temporary care are suspended. The temporary custody lasts until the family of the child becomes capable to accept their child back.
Permanent custody is applied if the court denies the parental custody rights of a parent or of both parents, if both parents are deceased and the child does not have a custodial parent, if the child has unknown parents, or if the parent made a contributory declaration when giving his child into adoption without including any details about their identification data or of the adopter, provided that the child may not be placed temporarily in the custody of his/her prospective adopters.
Together with taking the child into permanent custody, the public guardi- anship authority places the child either at foster parents, or – if this is not possible – into a children’s home, or if the condition of the child justifies it, then he is placed into a home for handicapped and mentally disabled people, while the system appoints a guardian (by profession) to help him. After being taken into permanent custody, the child is prepared for adoption and, respec- tively, for independent life (1997 XXXI. child Protection Act § 77-81).
In the present study, the terms of child protection care and state care denote those young people who were raised in community-based group homes, children’s homes or by foster parents.
research background data
There are several factors that might explain the very low student population consisting of students that have a foster care status (based on the very small amount of literature that refers to it); on the one hand, for example very few children from state care reach to higher education due to the ”results” of the secondary schools in Hungary. There is no exact data about this, but accord- ing to estimations, 5% of children registered into foster care study at a certain higher educational institution (Rácz, 2009).
The Student Union carried out a questionnaire-based research in 2010 among mentored and non-mentored students. From 907 mentored students, 422 completed the questionnaire. 335 mentored students answered the ques- tion about who they stayed with until the age of 18. 3 percent of them answered that they had lived with foster-parents, and 1 percent said they had lived in state care. Among the students acting as mentors there were none brought up in state care (kovács A, 2010).
There is very little research available that deals with the studies in high- er education of students who live in child protection care. Martin and Jackson (2002) attempted to identify the supporting and the hindering factors of the participation in higher education and they emphasized that the tutor had a very important role in the successful achievements during studies of the tu- tored child; if the tutor’s expectations were low towards the child, then this was a hindering factor. They pointed furthermore to another negative factor, the prejudice towards children and young people living in foster care, and the lack of the necessary material conditions for learning. Many reported that there were no appropriate quiet places in a children’s home, where one could study. According to the respondents, there was hardly any possibility to spend one’s free time constructively in a children’s home, which can also be traced back to the lack of conditions.
Similarly to Martin and Jackson (2002), Forsyth and Furlong (2003) found that one category of hindrance is formed by the economic difficulties. The stu- dents note that they feel that the length of their career is defined by a certain financial background rather than their abilities. They try to ease their finan- cial difficulties partly with paid work, partly with student loans. Furthermore, the researchers discover that the disadvantaged students abandon university in the period between the first to the third year, because they find their way through the mazes of higher education harder, including, among others, the postponement requests or the rules of repeated course registrations. Aban- doning frequently has, as reason, the repetition of the academic year, then the postponement and applications to other courses. The disadvantaged young person is oftentimes the first from the family to enter higher education. Thus, there is no experience within the family about the functioning mechanisms of higher education, they are unaware about the student grant system or of the rules regarding the studies. Many of the respondents mentioned that they were suggested both by their former schools and their immediate environment to
pursue vocational training and not higher education. During the research, the students also expressed that they very often felt as “strangers” in the higher education institution (Forsyth és Furlong, 2003).
Jackson and his collaborators found in their research that the respondents had marked the following facts to be the main problems connected to higher educational studies: they had had very little information about university ap- plication requirements and they had received only a few pieces of advice re- garding their choice of courses or their preparation for the exams. As a further issue, they had pointed at the low financial support and the lack of accommo- dation for the holiday periods. covering the costs of their studies was another problem for them, therefore, they worked quite often during holiday periods, as well as during the year, which made their preparation for exams even harder. Work also interfered with their accommodation to university life (Jackson, Ajayi and Quigley, 2005). As part of an international research, Rácz (2009) revealed those factors that in Hungary contributed to the appearance of young adults with child protection care background in higher education. He interviewed 35 individuals, out of which ten were pursuing their studies in a college or university-level qualification. Analysing the interviews, the authors listed the factors promoting higher education qualification in two main groups. Among the persistence of endogenous elements, willpower, the wish for breakout, the commitment for a secure future were given defining roles. The endogenous el- ements cover the circle of individual factors. The author considered the outside circumstances, in particular the child protection system and its participants to be listed as exogenous elements (Rácz, 2009).
Family constellations
The decisive role of the family as a fundamental social institution in the devel- opment of child’s personality cannot be debated, regardless of the fact wheth- er the given culture or organizational authority is in the course of expected or unexpected macro changes.
In order to have the child integrated into different communities as an au- tonomous, prepared adult, he/she needs the community of a family, which en- sures consistency, emotional security, a definite relationship of attachment. At the same time, a family is able to ensure attention, meaningful time spent together, love, physical and emotional relationship to all its members. Modern societies have witnessed a clearly perceived change in what concerns the so- cial situation of families and children in the past century. The state has kept its role of practising control upon the sphere of the family and the parent-child relationship framework, however, at the same time, this has become more fa- vourably nuanced.
Unfortunately, the “formula”, the designed picture about the biological family is rather common during the analysis of the interviews. Raising a child who was born from an early, reckless, and maybe unfounded sexual relation- ship is generally not possible for the young biological parents. In most cases
the fathers are unknown for these children, and they spend the early years of their life in child protection institutions. This pattern can be seen also from the life stories of a few of our interviewees.
”... there were times when she (the mother) wanted me back, but allegedly the circumstances were not good, and she didn’t have a job,… every two years she moved to a new place, and at that time they didn’t allow it, which I am happy for of course …” (Interview 1)
”... my mother got pregnant at a very young age, and she herself was in state care, and she didn’t have a family model in front of her, or how one should raise children at all, or something like that... and her age, ... so she was 16. ...immedi- ately, I mean... immediately after the hospital I ended up in a children’s home. ... well before, I think... well, they told me that I had been at two foster families... but they had taken me back, because none of them had cared for me, ...they hadn’t looked after me, and they had neglected me, and something like that... I was two years old when I was taken to my present family.” (Interview 5)
Another family construction which could be considered a representative model in our time is the official form of cohabitation, but with no legal/mar- riage bond. The life story of our following interviewee serves as an example for this. The parents, though not married, tried to ensure soothing circumstances and a family for their children. They worked as much as possible, having had a lower secondary qualification, respectively an intermediate vocational train- ing. However, slowly they became excluded from the job market. They found it hard to make ends meet, their relationship, their cohabitation ended, and due to substantial debts and the gradual non-payment of living expenses led to one of the youngest minor children to be taken into child protection custody, into a community-based home.
”...the constant piling of bills, debts, ... it was already several hundreds of thousands of Forints (HUF), almost one million... the notices were constantly ar- riving... I was then only a minor... we had a family social worker coming to us, she helped my mother manage the paperwork, find another flat, another job, as my mother had only 8 school grades finished, because of that it was difficult... so we had to move...” (Interview 3)
There is not always deviance behind the dysfunctional family life. notwith- standing a family tragedy (death of a parent or both parents), it is yet a fortu- nate change if the child lives only for a short period of time in a state institution and finds a home as quickly as possible in an expanded family, as was the case presented in the life story of one of our interviewees. During our conversation the reasons for the interviewee’s obvious withdrawnness was not revealed (the young adult spoke about the memories in short sentences, objectively), thus we intentionally did not try to lead the recollection into that direction.
”there are six of us in my family, I live with my godparents and their three children, my mother died, and my father had given me up, I am not in contact with him... but I am in contact with the grandparents from my mother’s side.” (Interview 4) The illness of one of the parents, the job of the other parent in a distant place endangers the balanced functioning of the families, the feeling of security and
self-confidence of the children to the same degree as the appearance or pres- ence of any concrete deviance. The short answers about family and memories with deep prints led us to think, in the case of one young adult, that due to a se- rious (yet unexpressed) problem (illness?) of the mother the child was moved into the guardianship of another adult family member (the aunt).
”... well, erm... actually the atmosphere at home was not too relaxed either, erm... and there was a certain mood..., ...my father worked a lot, and I/we barely saw him. Yet I do remember that when he came home for the weekend, he had a good influence on me. (laughs)... and he would have liked to teach me to be courageous,