Our identity has two cardinal aspects: the personal and the social identity. The former emphasizes the continuity and organization of the self, the latter originates from the group identification of the individual. Social identity can be described as cognitive and emotional elements of belonging to a sex, culture, nation and/or ethnicity, that is the interpretation of the given group’s values, norms, ideologies. Another significant component of self-identification – which is the core element of identity principles – is self-esteem, which is realized when compared to other groups.

In today’s Hungary Roma people are exposed to prejudice and discrimination. Therefore, the feeling of inhesion, conserving and respecting their culture and traditions play an important role in their lives. However, in case someone leaves this environment – for example moves to another city or changes school – or acquires some kind of knowledge that leads to questioning the norms of his/her original group he/she was socialized in, the person can be excluded from the community.

In our research we contacted secondary and university students, workers and habitants of segregated areas in Baranya county, who identified themselves as Romas (N = 29, male = 14, age average = 29,3 SD = 11,3; female = 15 age average = 33 SD = 16,5). We made interviews in focus groups concentrating on the topics of marriage, gender roles, taking part in higher education, prejudice, religion and other emerging values. We found that many young Romas have different attitudes towards values, traditions as their parents, grandparents. In the light of the above expressed conceptions – and including adolescents’ and young adults’ period and basic crisis of searching and forming their identities – this puts them at a higher risk of an identity crisis and the feeling of losing their origin, belonging to nowhere. These young people have to face discrimination from the major society because of their ethnic identity, and experience hardships at identifying with their community, family due to the changed norms, values and way of thinking they have.

Keywords: identity; Romas; values; exclusion; prejudice

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Fertility in Hungary has been declining for decades. However, social sciences have long discovered that there are different family-setting strategies in different social groups, so the trends observed on the basis of national data are not uniform. Some analyzes highlight the differences between people with tertiary education and those with primary education when comparing family-starting of people with different levels of education, while others emphasize the importance of the type of settlement and the conditions of the place of residence. The study presents the results of an interview study, it examines young people’s childbearing behavior in an improverished, isolated village.

Among the interviewees, the first childbirth are characteristic also at a much younger age than what national tendencies show. Women’s first child was born between the ages of 15 and 20. Men’s first child was born between the ages of 16 and 23. The need for a relationship is typical at an early age, but the time for the desire to become a parent does not begin parallelly. In the vast majority of cases, the first childbirth was not the result of a conscious decision, but due to the lack of information and/ or the inaccessibility of contraceptives prevented family planning.

Keywords: family formation; child bearing; gender roles; impoverished village; segregation

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Centered on the concept of institutional abuse, this article looks at interpersonal, program and societal violence, as reflected in the narrations of adults, who spent their childhood, or part of their childhood in the child protection system. The main body of the article presents the testimonials of adults who grew up in institutional care in Romania, as collected in the framework of the Support for Adult Survivors of Child Abuse SASCA project, funded by the European Commission.

We carried out 45 interviews and a focus group, with a total of 48 young adults who have spent part of their childhood in a residential care setting. The main goal of the interviews were to understand the perspectives of the interviewed adults on the living conditions in the residential settings, to address the problem of violence against children in institutional settings from the perspective of adult survivors and understand the long terms effects of such events.

Our results show that growing up in the child protection system unfortunately was not a smooth childhood experience for most of the interviewed persons, and encounters with violence were often recalled. Many adults who spent their childhoods or part of it in child protection institutions have been marked by coercive, unpleasant routines and experiences of physical, sexual and emotional violence committed by staff or other adults, as well as older children, and by a general lack of interest in protecting their rights and providing for their developmental needs.

Besides the planned strategies of deinstitutionalization and professionalization of child-care, a mature Romanian child protection system should be able to face its own past failures by developing a safety net for its children and by introducing reparatory measures for its past victims.

Keywords: institutional abuse; child protection system; institutional changes; consequences; perspectives of survivals.

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The aim of the study is to present innovative, family-centred services built on complex methodology and aiming at preventing criminal behaviour. These services were first developed and implemented by professionals of family and child welfare centres located in various settlements in Hungary (Szekszárd, Budapest, Szombathely, Miskolc) and by professionals of a reformatory (Rákospalota). The aim was to develop and conduct a special parental skills development program dedicated to children who might assume a criminal behaviour or are actually engaged in criminal acts and their parents. By complementing or enforcing the lacking or weak competences of the child which can be connected to their committing offences, the risk of re-offending in the case of children engaged in criminal acts, and the risk of committing criminal acts in case of children without such a history can be significantly reduced, respectively proper parental behavioural models can be transmitted towards these children. By measuring parental skills and child resilience in families participating at the model programs, we assessed the efficiency of the programs; furthermore, in order to get a deeper insight of their experiences, we interviewed target group members and involved professionals. In the present study, following a brief overview of the model programs, along the main results of this research, we present the role of child protection innovations in professional work.

Keywords: child welfare and child protection innovations; child resilience; parental skills development.

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