ABSTRACT

Hällström, Mira, Keinänen, Ville and Ryyppö, Emma. Developing children’s home: parents’ perspective. 73 p., 8 appendices. Language: Finnish. Kauniainen, Autumn 2011.

Diaconia University of Applied Sciences. Degree Programme in Social Services, Option in Christian Youth Work. Degree: Bachelor of Social Services.

It is generally known that parents’ position in child welfare is complicated and even forgotten. The problems of the parents, in many cases, continue when the child is taken into custody. Therefore it is important to research the parents’ experience and perspective on the co-operation with children’s homes. The aim of our thesis was to develop a questionnaire for the organization Save the Children. The purpose was to create the questionnaire in co-operation with parents whose children are taken into care and are living in Save the Children’s children’s homes. The questionnaire was commissioned by Save the Children. The organization needed a tool for gathering parents’ feedback on its children’s homes. We met four parents in order to plan the themes to be included in the questionnaire. Based on those themes, e.g. the daily rhythm in the children’s home and expenditure, we created the questionnaire. Consequently, we sent the questionnaire to 51 parents whose child was placed in the organization’s children’s homes.
We received 12 responses making the response rate circa 24 per cent. Reasons for such a low response percentage could be the quality, the length of the questionnaire, or the attributes of the answerers. However, the feedback on the questionnaire given by the parents was mainly positive. The questionnaire will be handed out to Save the Children’s organization. The organization will decide whether they want to use it to improve their family work or not. In the future, the questionnaire could become an important tool for Save the Children’s organization.

Keywords: children’s home, parent, questionnaire, Save the Children, child welfare