BLÁHOVÁ, J. The Most Frequent Causes of Failure of Foster Care in the Czech Republic 15 Years ago and Today. Prague: Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague, 2012, 114 pp. Diploma Thesis. The aim of my diploma thesis was to map the main cause which take part in premature end of foster care in our country. I have recorded this problematic since the year 1996 up to now. I have focused on definition and forms of foster care. Further on the process of its arrangement and the starting conditions which have an influence on foster care. I have introduced and compared the results of two big Czech studies which were devoted in this topic and were published in the interval of 15 years. Besides the failure cause of foster care on the foster parents side and children entrusted into a foster care and the system of alternative family care I have also focused on factors which contributes to its success on the other hand. In the practical part I have tried to get more deeply into the cause of foster care failure from the view of social workers from OSPOD. I was interested in what and how influences the foster care failure, how the system components of alternative family care and which changes social workers see as needed in the support of foster care success. It has been shown that the causes of its...

The development of ideas on deinstitutionalization of mental patients has a much longer history in the United States than is commonly acknowledged. Evidence of intense discussion on the rights of the mentally disturbed, curative as opposed to control measures in their treatment, and the drawbacks of congregating the afflicted in large institutions can be found as early as the middle of the 19th century. This discussion was provoked by dissemination of knowledge about the oldest community care program of all: the colony of mental patients in Gheel, Belgium. Based on document analysis of publications in the American Journal of Insanity from 1844 to 1921, this study attempts to trace how this discussion resulted in the first wave of deinstitutionalization in the American mental health care system, and the successful implementation of the alternative of hospital treatment. My study further documents how the development of this program was inhibited by the need of psychiatry to attain professional legitimation. In its struggle to acquire public respect and occupational authority, the profession focused on somatic explanations of disease that could justify categorization of psychiatry as a branch of medical science. While this claim was not decisively supported by laboratory findings, or the ability to cure patients, psychiatry put forward genetic explanations of mental disorder. This took the profession to the extreme of the eugenics movement, and eventually positioned it as an institution of social control instead of medical authority. Having thus failed to achieve the ultimate professional legitimation in the medical field, psychiatry was exposed to a new wave of criticism in the 1960s, which led to the second wave of deinstitutionalization. History repeated itself with the same outcome. In the absence of overall support within psychiatric circles, and a lack of appreciation of family care as a viable alternative to hospital treatment among social scientists, deinstitutionalization could not but fail again. The contribution of the study lies in the areas of deinstitutionalization, professionalization of expert labor, and the social construction of mental illness and deviance.

This dissertation addresses the role of welfare state/family care regimes, intersecting social locations and stress process factors in influencing the mental health and subjective well-being of informal caregivers of care recipients with age-related needs or disabilities within a European international context. Empirical analyses were conducted with secondary data from the 2012 and 2016 European Quality of Life Surveys. The study sample included informal caregivers (n=6,007) residing in seven different welfare state/family care regimes, including Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Italy, Greece and the United Kingdom. Ordinary least squares and ordered logit regression models revealed that welfare state/family care regime, social location (including both additive and interactive associations among gender, age group, marital status, and income), and stress process factors were independently associated with the mental health and life satisfaction of informal caregivers. Furthermore, there was some evidence to suggest that social location and stress process factors mediate some of the relationships between regime type and self-reported health and well-being and that stress process factors mediate relationships between social location factors and mental health and well-being. Overall, the results provide support for integrating welfare state/family care regime type and intersectionality factors into the SPM. Thus, future research on informal caregivers‘ mental health and well-being ought to incorporate such factors into their empirical analyses. The results also have some policy and practice implications. Residence in social democratic formal (Denmark), semi-formal (Sweden) and conservative formal (France) care regimes was the most beneficial to informal caregivers self-reported mental health. This was also the case for life satisfaction, except that residence in the liberal semi-formal (UK) was more beneficial than in the conservative formal (France) care regime. Mediating social location and stress process factors suggest that UK policy makers should address the greater social location disparities, greater role overload, and lack of coping resources that advantage Danish and Swedish informal caregivers compared to those residing in the UK. Lastly, policy makers from all the European countries assessed in the study should address the poorer mental health status of women and rural informal caregivers, those who experience role overload, secondary stressors, and lack coping resources. They should also address the the lower levels of formal education, more secondary stressors, and lack of coping resources associated with poorer subjective well-being. / Graduate

The aim of the study is to describe women’s view on voluntariness in family care and what formal care can help them in their wants. The study is viewing the results from both a family care perspective and a formal care perspective. The study is split into two sub-studies to better understand the data and give a broader view of the problem. The data from the first sub-study is collected through a survey shared on social media. The survey has collected answers from women who preform family care and is split up into both estimation questions and free form questions. The second sub-study is a semi-structured interview with an “anhörigkonsulent”, a Swedish work title for someone who helps family care workers. The result presents that the women and the anhörigkonsulent both find several problems with the voluntariness among the women who preform family care and what could help them in their role as a family caregiver. Though both have several suggestions that could change for the women and therefore would make a difference in the view of their own voluntariness.

Yes / The infrequency of sudden deaths means that professionals have limited exposure, making it difficult to gain experience and feel confident in their role. This meta-synthesis aims to synthesise qualitative research on the experience of professionals responding to cases of sudden or unexpected death. A systematic literature search was conducted using Academic Search Complete, CINHAL, Embase, psycINFO, PubMed and Web of Science, identifying ten papers for inclusion. Studies were appraised and synthesized using the principles of meta‐synthesis. Four superordinate themes were identified: perceptions of role, experience on scene, approaches to coping, and barriers to support. Findings suggest the way responders perceive their role and their experience on scene affect the approach taken to tasks and coping strategies used. The complexity of experience is often not acknowledged by responders or their colleagues. Experiences are compounded by cumulative factors which were expressed by different professional groups and across settings. Several barriers relating to workforce culture within organisations were identified, alongside the implications these have on staff wellbeing and the impact on bereaved families.

The diploma thesis is concerned about the theme of alternative family care in Czech republic, it is focused on psychologist's involvement in this field. It report summary of informations about menaced and abandoned children, about types of alternative family care, about profession of psychologist, who is concerned this theme and about failings in contemporary system. Empiri- cal part of the diploma thesis bring enrichment of opinions and point of view of experts working in this field, describe profession of psychologist, garner observations of experts to problems, which they see from their experience in alternative family care and bring suggestions for solu- tion. The diploma thesis give informations about possibilities in education of psychologist and organization's service for alternative and biological families. This diploma thesis is intented for psychologist, as well as for all the experts who wants to work in this field.

The aim of the Diploma Thesis about the Integration of an adopted child into a family is to analyse a process of integrating of an adopted child into a new family and identify areas with problems with adaptation on a new educational background. The main emphasis is put on an area of family relationship and educational problems. This Thesis is divided into the theoretical and the practical part. The theoretical part contains three chapters and the practical part includes a methodology of a research and a research report. The first chapter of the theoretical part is dedicated to a family as a basic supportive surround. A family is defined there, various conceptions of family workings and family functions are described there. The next subheads deal with family malfunction, psychical needs of children and parents and a psychic deprivation arising from unfilled needs. The second chapter explains basic terms of an alternative care. There are also characteristics of children suitable for an adoption and a description of an adoption process from a decision to an adoption. The third chapter deals with an integration of an adopted child into a family. The first subhead refers an attachment and relationships. There are described types of attachment between a mother and her child, an influence of a trauma on...

Anotace: Tato diplomová práce se věnuje vzdělávání a přípravou dětí z ústavní výchovy na samostatný život. V teoretické části najdeme především okolnosti a příčiny pobytu dětí v ústavních zařízeních, funkce jednotlivých zařízení a také, jak se této přípravě jednotlivé organizace pro děti s nařízenou ústavní výchovou věnují. Nedílnou součástí je analýza jednotlivých nevládních organizací na území hlavního města Prahy, které děti v tomto směru vzdělávají a pomáhají jim s přechodem do samostatného života. Praktická část se zaměřuje na jeden ze střednědobých vzdělávacích projektů, který umožňuje svým klientům vyzkoušet si úkoly patřící k samostatnému životu v bezpečném prostředí, ještě než ústavní zařízení opustí. Praktickou část tvoří především kvalitativní výzkum provedený metodou rozhovoru, které vycházejí z cílů projektu. Výzkum zjišťuje znalosti a dovednosti klientů, které si během kurzu osvojili. Annotation: This diploma thesis is dedicated to education and training of children in institutional care to independent life. In the theoretical part we can find especially the circumstances and causes why children have to stay in institutions, the functions of individual institutions, as well as the preparation of individual organizations for children in the institutional education pay. An integral part is an...

This master thesis deals with educational needs of foster parents. The main assumption of this thesis is that foster parents are despite all specifics among all parents. Therefore it firstly mentions competences, that are essential for good parenthood and relationship between parents as partners. Than it focuses on specific competences that are essential for foster parents. The main question then is how to encourage these competences during educational activities. In the next part this thesis describes the current state of education of foster parents, examples of good practice and present researches. The empirical part of the thesis consists of a qualitative research, which aims to describe the educational needs of foster parents, current deficiencies and suggestions on what to improve. The research is based on semi-structured interviews with foster parents and professionals in the field of alternative family care. On the basis of this research I propose a suitable educational programme for foster parents. KEY WORDS: education of foster parents, foster care, alternative family care, competences of parents

This diploma work deals with homosexually oriented persons that want to establish a family or that already have a child and raise it up. It concerns to biological parentage or "only" psychological parentage or a relationship with same-sex partner or an individual care for a child. The work specifies basic terms and contains a short overview of homosexuality in view of history, religion and medicine. The work learns the reader in history and legislation differences of the registered partnership and matrimony. It also marginally deals with possibilities and rights of homosexual persons in the world. The work also includes opinion on family, its functions and types. It describes today's possibilities of homosexuals' ways to a child. The work also focuses on issue of rising up a child by homosexuals. To clarify links, it describes here gay and lesbian relations and families, including development of a child being raised up in a non-traditional family. Aim of the work is to document subjective opinions of the homosexuals themselves to the issue of rising up children by persons with such an orientation, to find out how they evaluate attitude of the society to this topic and how these persons are interested in LGBT situation. For the survey and reconnaissance of the opinions, on-line questionnaire was...