Praktyka sądowa w zakresie realizacji zasady tymczasowości pieczy zastępczej

Abstract

The Family and Guardianship Code (FGC) guarantees in Article 100 that parents should receive assistance from courts and other public authorities in proper exercise of their parental authority over the child. The aim of such assistance should be to remove obstacles that prevent parents from exercising their authority or render it difficult. It is only when – despite the assistance and support provided to the families – a situation whereby the child’s interests are threatened persists or the threat to such interests becomes serious that the guardianship court decides to place the child outside his/her family in accordance with Article 112(3) (1) FGC. The family support and alternative care system which has existed since 2012 is based, on the axiological plane, on the constitutional principle of state subsidiarity, on respect for the rights of the child, as set forth in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and on recognition of the agency of the child and of the family. A child placed in alternative care has, among other rights, the right to be brought up in family-based forms of alternative care, to return to his/her [biological] family, to maintain personal contact with parents, and to have a stable upbringing environment. Alternative care lasts as long as the reasons why it was applied by the guardianship court persist. Therefore, as a rule, it is a temporary solution, rather than the target one. The guardianship court and the poviat (county) units in charge of organization of alternative care placements have a statutory duty to regularly assess the situation of a child placed in care and to check whether the child can return to parental care, that is, whether the family can be reintegrated. In 2018, the Institute of Justice was commissioned by the Ministry of Justice to implement (using quantitative and qualitative methods) a research project titled ‘Court Practice in the Field of Implementing the Principle of Temporary Nature of Alternative Care’, whose aim was to check empirically the actual court practices as regards implementing the principle introduced by Article 112(4) FGC.