Primary education challenges in social integration of adopted children

Abstract

Slow implementation of complex legal procedures in the adoption process in Bosnia and Herzegovina has resulted in children without parental care remaining in institutions for increasing lengths of time. The rare positive outcomes of the adoption process that result in full integration into the adoptive family once the adoption decision becomes final very often occur when the child is of preschool or school age. The challenges facing the child coming to the adoptive family environment are inevitably related to the start or continuation of schooling. The dynamics of educational reforms in primary education have been evident in the recent years, but these have not been harmonized with social protection in terms of continuous connectedness and appropriate operating strategies in these two areas. This is evidenced by the fact that Bosnia and Herzegovina still lacks the records for the exact number of children without parental care, as well as the fact that the relevant line ministry in the Federation of BiH does not have a unified list with the number of children without parental care or without appropriate parental care that are eligible for adoption, or a list of children that have already been adopted. Also, according to the law, Centres for Social Work do not have any further activities in relation to the adopted child, and the same is true for the primary school attended by the child placed in the adoptive family. Moreover, primary schools do not have a mechanism to monitor the development of these children. This raises the questions of whether the schools are ready and how they can institutionally and systematically support the adopted child and its parents in overcoming certain obstacles and problems, such as stagnation of the child and the adoptive parent on their path to adoption and life in the adoptive family? Is the school system in Bosnia and Herzegovina with its current capacities and services able to provide an appropriately sensitized treatment approach to, for example, a child/student in the process of adoption, or will the adopted child, especially as a new student and especially in case of incomplete adoption, go on to live their classroom life in a better T-shirt yet be labelled as rejected?