Executive Summary
ChildHub has reviewed existing quality mechanisms in South East Europe in order to contribute and to enhance quality services available for children by increasing the available body of knowledge on this issue.
Based on the European principles for integrated child protection systems, this review aims to analyse the situation in Albania to assess if and to what extent standards, indicators and tools and systems of monitoring and evaluation are in place. Under the auspices of a national coordinating framework, systems are effectively regulated and independently monitored and accountable. Indeed, the framework ensures accessible and quality child-sensitive services and care for all children to guarantee them better life. Therefore, the monitoring system provides unrestricted access to monitor the quality of services, in particular any form of institutional care.
The review was conducted during July – October 2017. The framework of the review was discussed among a virtual team of researchers in SEE. The analysis was based on secondary data, gathered through desk research, and primary data, gathered through 7 interviews with key stakeholders, representatives of monitoring institutions, CP workers and academia. The report consists of a descriptive component of the above mechanisms and an analysis component, which focuses on the strong points, weak points and gaps of the system, the level of child and family participation in the monitoring/inspection processes, existing recommendations and promising practices.
The review concluded that the quality review mechanism in Albania is not strong and the scope of quality control is limited in legal terms. The regulatory framework is in need of harmonisation, especially in the development of improved documents of standards of services. The implementation of quality control is weak, focused more on reporting duties than on improvement of quality of services, and there is also a lack of human and financial resources and full independence to do so. Overlapping of roles of actors in this regard increases confusion in implementation and taking responsibility. Transparency to services users and the public has not been a goal of the system, while meaningful participation of children and families in the monitoring process is only recently becoming a goal, but is not sufficiently reflected in relevant documents and even less so during implementation.
The report gives recommendations on the improvement of the regulatory framework related to quality review mechanisms and implementation. First, the framework should reflect a new conceptual approach for monitoring being result-based. Second, it should include the building of a coordinating body for the development of methodology documents and clear roles and responsibilities for relevant actors. Third, the framework should reinforce the recommendations through executive measures and improving the sharing of information between actors. Fourth, the framework should aim to increase independence of the system, and increase human and financial resources to ensure effective implementation. Last but not least, the participation of children and families and transparency to the public and services users needs to be an inherent goal of the system.
To download national reports on existing quality mechanisms in other countries of the regions, please click the links below:
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bulgaria
Croatia
Kosovo
Moldova
Romania
Serbia