In recent years, Greece has taken significant steps to strengthen the institution of foster care. There is now a dedicated allowance, employment rights are in place, and foster parents are recognised as beneficiaries of programmes for nurseries and Creative Activity Centres for Children (KDAP).
And yet, behind this picture lies a significant contradiction.
The State asks a citizen to open their home and their life to a child who needs protection, stability and care. However, when that family needs the services that would make this care genuinely possible, foster care often ceases to be treated as a distinct consideration.
And this is where the grey area begins.
There is an allowance. But foster care is not just about an allowance.
The Greek Organisation of Welfare Benefits and Social Solidarity (OPEKA) provides a dedicated foster care allowance of €525 per month for a typically developing child and €750 for a child with a disability, without income criteria.
This is an important measure and should not be underestimated.
However, foster care is not a financial transaction. It is not a matter of “receiving an allowance and taking responsibility for a child”.
It is everyday care. It involves school, doctors, therapies, transportation, employment, time, emotional resilience, relationships with services and, in many cases, managing a difficult personal history that the child carries with them.
This is why the real question is not only how much money the State provides.
It is how much easier it makes the everyday life of a foster family.
Vouchers: The right to participate does not necessarily mean priority
Foster parents are included among the beneficiaries of EETAA(Hellenic Agency for Local Development and Local Government) programmes for nurseries, early childhood education and care centres, and Creative Activity Centres for Children (KDAP).
This is positive.
However, the fact that someone has the right to submit an application does not mean that they are given priority.
Under the scoring criteria of these programmes, foster parent status does not appear as a separate criterion awarding additional points or priority. Ranking is based on other social and economic criteria.
And this raises a reasonable question:
If the State considers foster care a key instrument for deinstitutionalisation and child protection, why are foster families not given corresponding priority in accessing the care services they need every day?
Moreover, in 2026–2027, tens of thousands of children were left without KDAP vouchers because the available budget had been exhausted.
Therefore, this is not a theoretical issue.
When there are not enough places, the question of who is given priority becomes a real one.
And what about healthcare?
Children in foster care have health insurance and medical coverage, as provided for by the legal framework.
There are also the general mechanisms of the National Organisation for Healthcare Services Provision (EOPYY) for specialised therapies and other services.
However, this is different from an organised system that recognises foster care in practice.
A child may need child psychiatric follow-up, psychotherapy, speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, developmental assessment or other services.
The question, therefore, is not whether the child is “entitled” to receive them.
The question is:
How quickly can the child receive them?
And how much must a foster parent struggle to find an available service, an appointment, a therapist and funding?
Foster care is recognised as a child protection institution. However, there does not appear to be a correspondingly comprehensive system ensuring immediate access to the services a child may need after being placed with a foster family.
The State assesses foster parents. Who assesses the support they receive?
Before foster care begins, the State examines the suitability of the family.
The social assessment examines the family situation, the capacities of prospective foster parents, their ability to manage crises and the likelihood that they will cooperate with the child’s biological family.
In other words, the State knows very well that foster care is not a simple matter.
It knows that foster care may require time, resilience, cooperation with services and crisis management.
And yet, after the child’s placement, we do not see a correspondingly unified and automatic support package for the foster family.
And this is perhaps where the greatest gap lies.
The State examines whether a family is ready to become a foster family. But how ready is the State itself to support that family once foster care begins?
Progress has been made in employment rights
Foster parents are recognised as beneficiaries of parental leave and parental leave allowance.
There are also specific provisions concerning maternity leave for employed women who become foster parents.
This shows that the State has recognised something important:
Foster care requires time.
However, the same recognition should also be reflected in the services that support the family’s everyday life.
Because it is not enough to give a parent time to care for a child if, at the same time, they are left waiting for months for a service the child needs.
And what about professional foster care?
In recent years, the number of professional foster carers has remained stable.
And this is no coincidence.
It is not only due to a lack of information and awareness in local communities, but also to the shortcomings that continue to characterise the institution, interruptions in payments and the uncertainty they create.
Professional foster care is rightly treated as a professional activity.
What continues to be insufficiently recognised, however, is its particular social and therapeutic dimension within child protection.
Professional foster carers do not simply provide accommodation and everyday care.
They take responsibility for caring for children with complex trauma or disabilities, who may need a long and demanding journey of medical interventions, therapeutic programmes and specialised services.
A journey that requires continuous presence, time, perseverance, close cooperation with different professionals and, above all, the stability of a safe family environment.
This responsibility cannot be carried out within a framework of financial uncertainty.
Stable and continuous funding, with predictable payments, is required, along with a clear tax and legislative framework that recognises the particularities of the role through appropriate tax exemptions and more favourable conditions for professional foster carers, who are treated as self-employed professionals regardless of the crucial work they provide within our country’s child protection system.
No one becomes a professional foster carer to make money, particularly in Greece…
However, this does not mean that the financial dimension of the institution is of secondary importance.
Adequate resources and financial stability are essential prerequisites for the quality of care and for meeting the child’s needs.
The care of a child cannot depend on the financial resilience of the person caring for them.
Foster care does not need privileges. It needs consistency and infrastructure.
Perhaps this is where the essence of the discussion lies.
It is not necessary to ask for “privileges” for foster parents.
We are asking for consistency.
If the State says that foster care is one of the main ways for children to grow up in a family environment rather than in institutions, then it must also create the conditions that allow the families taking on this role to genuinely fulfil it.
This means an allowance, but not only an allowance.
It means access to nurseries and KDAP without foster care being treated simply as yet another family circumstance.
It means access to health and mental health services without endless searching and waiting.
It means social services that do not appear only to check whether everything is going well, but are genuinely available when the family needs help.
It means a State that does not simply tell a citizen:
“Become a foster parent.”
But instead tells them:
“Become a foster parent. And we will be by your side throughout the journey.”
Awareness-raising activities alone are not enough. We need solutions that work.
Every effort to provide information and raise awareness about foster care is important.
But it is not enough.
We cannot ask more and more citizens to trust the institution, become foster parents and take on such an important responsibility if, at the same time, we do not demonstrate in practice that there is a system they can rely on.
Realistic, workable solutions are needed.
Solutions that do not remain limited to an awareness campaign or a well-worded statement, but are clearly communicated to prospective foster parents and consistently implemented.
Prospective foster parents must know not only what the system asks of them, but also what they can expect from it.
They must be able to trust the professionals who will accompany them.
They must know who is responsible when a problem arises.
They must know which services are available, how they can access them and within what timeframe.
Because trust is not built through slogans.
It is built when what we tell people before they become foster parents is consistent with what they encounter once they become foster parents.
If we say that foster care is a priority, this must be reflected in the services.
If we say that foster parents are not alone, someone must be there when they genuinely need help.
If we say that we want more families to open their doors to a child, we must first have opened the doors of the system ourselves.
Otherwise, we create a vicious cycle.
We invest in information and awareness-raising, invite citizens to trust foster care, some respond, and then they find themselves facing difficulties that had not been anticipated or adequately communicated.
The resulting disappointment does not affect only one family.
It affects the credibility of the entire institution.
And ultimately, instead of promoting foster care, we risk undermining it ourselves.
Foster care does not only need greater visibility. It needs greater consistency between what we promise and what we can genuinely offer.
Because if we want people to trust foster care, they must first be able to trust the system that supports it.