Title: FBU – Parents’ country association
Country: DENMARK
Form(s) of actions:
Political involvement, recommendations for politicians and The Danish National Board of Social Services”.
Type(s) of actions:
Proposals for solutions, service monitoring, information, networking.
Summary:
In social policy, FBU advocates for parents to be met with recognition and respect, considering them as active participants in their children’s lives. Additionally, FBU works towards improving the conditions of public support for children and their families, viewing the family as a whole, while also keeping the “best interests of the child” in focus.
Aims:
To be a user-organization and an association which secures conditions for placed children in residential institutions. And to secure the quality of the residential institutions.
Main stakeholders:
Parents with children placed outside the home, employees of residential institutions.
Issues addressed:
Residential institutions are not always educated or matching for the children or young people placed in them.
Outcome:
Policy development and participation.
Sustainability:
FBU is at the same time a user organisation and a voluntary social association that brings together, supports and advises parents with children and young people who need special support according to the rules of the Service Act.
FBU was founded in 1969 by a group of parents with children in residential institutions/school homes. A group of headmasters supported the parents in the task of gathering parents to found the association. The parents came together to work towards creating a sufficient number of places for their children and young people who needed support through placement. At the same time, they worked to ensure that the services were good enough – in a modern word: qualified. Particularly with a focus on ensuring that the children received a proper education.
The parents worked to establish cooperation between parents and institutions – even back then, parents and pedagogues knew that cooperation was necessary to achieve a good outcome for the children.
Parents also came together because, as the first chairman put it: ‘our first and perhaps biggest task is to stand together, simply, parents must be a support for each other, we must be able to talk about our problems’.
FBU was started as an association of parents with children in residential institutions. Over the years, the membership group – which is also the target group for FBU’s initiatives – has evolved to include parents with children in all types of placement, including foster care and residential care. In addition, there are also parents who are in contact with the municipality about e.g.
Link(s): https://fbu.dk/om-os/
Data source: FB, website, newspaper article, LinkedIn
