Around 520 children in Malta are growing up outside their biological families, in alternative care.
For the Director of Alternative Care at the Foundation for Social Welfare Services Remenda Grech, each one is a name, a face, a story, worthy of outreach and help.
Grech spoke to The Malta Independent on Sunday in an interview to explain how the country is working to create safe, stable, and nurturing environments for children who cannot remain with their biological families.
At the moment, there are currently 520 children in alternative care in Malta, although the number fluctuates regularly, Grech said.
According to Grech, this step is only taken as a last resort, after all other measures to support a child’s family have failed.
“Our first priority is always to help the family so that the child can remain in their home and be protected as much as possible,” Grech said.
When parents or extended family are unable to provide the necessary care or safety, the Directorate for Child Protection may recommend a temporary care order, issued by the Court, to place the child under the care of the Directorate for Alternative Care.
“This means we are temporarily given carer’s custody by the Court and can take day-to-day decisions for these children’s needs. Meanwhile, the case continues in Court and its outcome will determine the longer-term future,” Grech said.
Children may be removed from their homes due to physical or sexual abuse, extreme neglect, or situations where parents are battling substance misuse or complete loss of control, among other reasons.
The Directorate supports children from infancy to age 17, each with different realities and care needs.
“We offer different placements, with foster placements being the closest to a sense of family, and normally our first priority,” Grech said.
The fostering option
The directorate continuously encourages the public to consider fostering. When fostering is not possible, children may be placed in smaller community homes designed to simulate family life, Grech said.
“These are normal houses or apartments housing three or four children,” she said. “We adapt the home according to each child’s needs and aim to offer them a sense of normalcy,” Grech said.
Over the past years, FSWS has invested in ten smaller community homes and shifted toward de-institutionalisation, moving away from larger institutional models toward more intimate settings that better suit individual care plans, Grech said.
In cases where children are placed in larger residential homes, the state collaborates through Public Social Partnerships (PSPs), working with NGOs and the Church, she said.
“Even within these settings, we work towards de-institutionalisation. Each child still has an individual care plan tailored to their needs,” Grech said.
Asked what challenges the directorate faces when providing stable, nurturing environments for children in alternative care, Grech said that one of the biggest challenges would be the trauma these children experience – both before and after being placed in care.
“Being removed from one’s family is a trauma in itself,” Grech said. “This is often expressed through difficult or troubled behaviour,” she added.
Children’s brains, she explained, are wired differently after traumatic experiences, as evidence has showed. The Directorate, therefore, adapts its parenting strategies accordingly, Grech said.
“It’s not just past trauma, these children still face ongoing struggles, especially when they remain in contact with struggling families,” she said.
Contact with parents
Balancing the child’s right to maintain contact with family against the potential for re-traumatisation is a delicate process, Grech continued.
Grech said that she firmly believes in the child’s right to maintain contact with their parents, “no matter what they might have done.”
However, contact is often supervised, and in some extreme cases, it may be temporarily or permanently suspended.
“When we believe contact is not beneficial, we present our case to the Review Board or consult the Court,” Grech said.
“These decisions are never taken lightly, the primary interest must always be that of the minors,” she added.
Suspended contact may be reintroduced after working with parents to improve their awareness and behaviour, Grech said.
Despite this, the government has made great investments towards fostering services and foster families in the past years, as well as towards community homes, and working towards de-institutionalisation, which has led to better results in this regard.
One of the major advancements in recent years is the creation of the After Care Service, launched by the directorate when Grech took over, after the law was amended to add an ‘After Care’ chapter to the Alternative Care legislation.
“We truly believe no child should be shown the door after the age of 18,” Grech said, adding that they are not left to their own devices.
The law now allows for extended placements until age 21, offering peace of mind and enabling young adults to pursue education or employment without instability, Grech said.
After Care Service
“The After Care Service within the directorate engages in outreach, offering mentoring services to support them, even those who have already left the system, but are still struggling out there,” Grech said.
The directorate also has its own After Care buildings which offer placements until the age of 21.
A third of children in alternative care today also benefit from permanency, meaning they have a Court decree ensuring they cannot be removed from their placement, providing an even greater sense of security, stability and peace of mind, Grech continued.
She added that there are also children who were adopted, increasing their stability.
Grech said that the Directorate assigns social workers to each child, regardless of their placement, and in recent years has also engaged in-house therapists and appointed a consultant paediatrician specialising in children in alternative care.
“Our Looked After Children service works holistically, from psychological to medical needs,” Grech said.
The Looked After Children Service (LAC) works with minors who reside in out-of-home care placements within the Children’s Directorate, from babies to adolescents, and provides the necessary care and attention from the foster care or residential placements, Grech said.
Though there are not yet enough therapists to serve every child individually, community homes and FSWS partners offer supplementary services, Grech said.
The agency also organises annual internal consultation groups to hear directly from children about their experiences.
“We ask them to tell us how they want the service to evolve. Their voice matters in shaping and enhancing how we work,” she said.
The directorate itself also has a lawyer which takes part in the planning of children’s and youths’ individual care plans, to ensure their rights are being protected as best as possible, Grech said.
Grech, who has worked in the sector for 20 years, said that there is “no comparison” in the difference between now and two decades ago.
“There was no holistic, specific law that incorporates all aspects in care. Now we have a strong legislation, and it has been amended multiple times in the past five years alone,” she said, adding that the current law is dynamic and evolves with the children’s needs.
Grech also oversees youth services that support at-risk youths, both in and out of care.
Three initiatives
The Youth Services, within the FSWS, incorporates three initiatives, which include Youth in Focus, Youth Empowered Initiatives and Embark for Life.
These services help youths who may have simply gotten involved with the wrong crowd or have submitted to peer pressure, as well as youths living in problematic social situations which could lead them to commit crimes, Grech said.
In Malta, all those who are 14 years old and older must face criminal responsibility, she said.
Consequently, the directorate developed the newly launched €3.5 million EU co-financed project “It-Tieni Ċans” (“Second Chance”), aimed at vulnerable youths, aged from 13 to 25, who have come into contact with the justice system.
“We realised that some of these youths were being arrested, or brought before the juvenile Court, without having been properly reached by mainstream services,” she said.
The programme has three pillars: training professionals and building a stakeholder network, outreach – including working with the Drugs Tribunal and juvenile Court, as well as youth interventions that focus on life skills, work opportunities and social integration, Grech said.
“We want to give them the fishing rod, not just the fish, so they can live independently, without our intervention or that of other entities,” Grech said.
“The programme is voluntary, but all youths brought before the Courts will be offered the opportunity to work with a multidisciplinary team to tackle their problems,” Grech said.
She added that stakeholders work together with the FSWS collaboratively to help these youths “learn their lesson, but in a positive manner,” where they are offered therapy, counselling, social work intervention, mentors, and an action plan.
The directorate has also worked with the police and other stakeholders in schools, for example, to drastically reduce incidences of bullying, and has intervened in cases of large youth gatherings which may have been bothersome to residents, Grech said.
“We worked with these youths to understand them, and something they told us is that they need more open spaces, more places where to go,” Grech said.
Youth hub
Part of the project, in consultation with these youths, will also include the creation of a Youth Hub, for these youths to have a place to go to socialise.
Asked how the FSWS adapted its services in recent years in response to new societal challenges, such as digital risks, mental health concerns, or family breakdowns, Grech said that one needs to accept that society is evolving and changing at a very fast rate, especially with technological advancements.
“Shortly after the pandemic, the directorate conducted an internal study which found an increase of computer misuse in youths in the directorate’s remit, which resulted in very difficult social situations,” Grech said.
She said that some youths do not even leave their computers to meet their basic needs.
“We had a serious problem there. We are also seeing youths who fall under the social pressures or those of social media, resulting in more mental health problems,” Grech said.
She said that the FSWS has adapted by consulting with mental health services on a regular basis.
“These projects are not all ours. Our belief is that if there is a social problem, we reach out to all stakeholders to come together, avoid duplication, and use our resources in the best way possible,” Grech said.
She continued that the FSWS stepped up its game when it comes to different training provided, and the directorate also collaborates with Agenzija Sedqa to work with youths with problems of substance misuse, as well as providing training for professionals from mental health services.
Youths at risk
“We must run after every youth and actively reach out to them. It is a whole chain of systems, training and working with each other, to identify the existing gaps,” Grech said.
Grech said that the directorate is also reaching out to Local Councils and regions to identify areas where youths may be at risk.
Grech said that the realities pointed out in the hit-series Adolescence worried her in a global context, as what Malta is facing is a reality faced all over the world.
Grech said that in actual fact, she felt that Malta’s reality was much better than those abroad, citing field visits in other countries.
“In other countries, many more youths fall through the net. Malta is a small country, and we are investing greatly on how entities can work together, further closing the holes in that net,” Grech said, adding that often, when things go wrong in other countries, it would be due to a lack of communication or fragmentation of services.
Today’s realities are still worrying, Grech said, with all the existing social media platforms that are also contributing to increased addictive behaviour, as well as uncontrolled access to several problematic personalities.
Grech said this is difficult to control, and entities must work together and undergo training so that it can address the problem, from strengthening the families, to reaching these youths at a young age.
Detention
Grech said she believes more could be done, particularly in how youth detention is handled.
“With prevention, we can avoid many children ending up in CORRs (Centre of Residential Restorative Services),” she said. “But for a small minority, that remains necessary,” Grech said.
Still, she said she would like to see more sentences involving community engagement and reformative justice, allowing youths to understand the consequences of their actions and give back to society.
Grech acknowledged that attracting and retaining social and youth workers is a constant challenge.
“This work is heavy. It can lead to the transfer of emotional burdens onto the professionals themselves,” she said.
While the FSWS provides supervision, therapy through the Employment Support Programme (ESP), and in-house therapists, she recognises that burnout is real.
“Some professionals stay for years, others move on, and that’s a natural process,” she said.
To support its team, the FSWS encourages internal mobility, allowing workers to shift between services to protect their wellbeing and continue learning.
Grech said the vision for the coming years is clear: “a strong structure of united entities” working together to address the complexities of youth care and intervention in a proactive and holistic way.
“We must strengthen families, listen to children, and offer our youth the opportunities they need to grow into healthy, independent adults,” she said.