In the high-ceilinged dining room of the Adolescent Protection Unit “Agia Varvara” in Nea Smyrni, three girls talk around a round wooden table while eating lunch. Served nearby on large metal platters, today’s menu includes fish fillet with rice and salad. In the historic building, donated by the Asia Minor Greek Charalambos Iosephoglou for the orphans of the Asia Minor Catastrophe, the three girls share their daily adolescent life with nineteen others, aged 12 to 18. They are not orphans, but children whom the state, following a prosecutor’s order, decided needed to be removed from their biological families due to parental neglect or abuse.

What does child protection actually mean today? The case of “The Ark of the World,” with the recent second-degree conviction of its founder, shook society’s blind trust in closed institutions with strong marketing but weak accountability, prompting reflection on something more fundamental than the fate of a “star” of social welfare.

“We have equated the concept of child protection with the child protection system. And that system has been almost entirely identified with institutional care, shortly after the child is removed from their natural family environment,” says Anastasios Loukas, social worker at “Agia Varvara,” in Vima. Even when cases with criminal liability, like those attributed to “Ark of the World” are absent, institutionalization increases the risk of violence and abuse among the children themselves—a fact highlighted in international literature and reinforcing the consistent position of organizations like UNICEF in favor of small, family-based care structures.

Children enter institutions physically or psychologically traumatized, from parents who have overwhelmingly experienced poverty and social exclusion. They are then asked to live in an environment that, by its nature, struggles to offer individualized attention and care. “Chaotic children in chaotic buildings,” as Loukas summarizes. “We must not send the message that there are ‘good’ institutions,” he notes. The discussion, in his view, should shift from the “quality” of past orphanages to whether the state can achieve “family restoration before institutionalization,” so that the parent-child bond is not lost and the last-resort solution of closed institutional care does not become the dominant model of child protection.

In international practice, foster care has long been considered the best mechanism for temporary family placement for children who must be immediately removed from their homes. Based on the “family-based care” model, foster care seeks to provide the child with a stable family environment as quickly as possible, making trauma manageable and increasing the chances of reunification with biological parents where feasible, ultimately supporting a smooth and safe transition to adulthood.

In recent years, Greece has attempted a similar shift through professional foster care and Semi-Autonomous Living Units (SALUs), moving the focus from “where the child will go” to “how the child will live as a child.” As the Minister for Social Cohesion and Family, Domna Michailidou, tells Vima, the state now focuses on ensuring the quality of the child’s lived experience. Professional foster care provides warmth and specialized care for children with the greatest needs, while SALUs give adolescents and young adults aged 15–26 the right to dignity and preparation for independent adult life within the social fabric. Together, these two systems shift attention from mere institutional housing management to substantive protection of child and adolescent identity.

Professional foster care in Greece is now in the stage of operational maturation. In practice, the pilot implementation is based on cooperation between the Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family and the University of West Attica for training professional foster parents, with the explicit goal of deinstitutionalizing children with physical or psychological disabilities. The first eleven foster parents completed training and were entered into the special registry by mid-2025. Indicative of efforts to make the system sustainable is the increase of the monthly allowance to €1,850 gross, acknowledging that this is “high-intensity” care that cannot rely solely on the goodwill of prospective foster parents.

Low Participation and Bureaucracy

The challenge remains twofold: to scale the program so it does not remain a narrow pilot and to prove in practice that frontline services exist to sustain foster care, especially where institutional care continues to function as an “easy” solution. The main obstacles identified are low participation so far and bureaucratic delays in social investigations and the successful matching of children and foster parents.

Speaking to Vima, Lida Anagnostaki, assistant professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, notes that the state’s shift toward deinstitutionalization, particularly through professional foster care, is moving in the right direction. She emphasizes, however, that the success of the system will be determined on the ground—whether it evolves into public policy with investment in trained frontline personnel and stable funding included in the regular budget. “Foster care in Greece so far operates within the framework of volunteerism and philanthropy, but this is not a sustainable basis for an effective overall social welfare policy,” she points out.

Foster Care vs. Adoption

Perhaps the most critical gap in the system is in the 5–15 age group, for whom interest in either adoption or foster care is extremely low due to the stereotypical belief that a child’s personality is formed in the first five years of life and the mistaken identification of foster care motives with those of adoption. “Foster care, whether simple or professional, is the supreme institution for protecting the child,” says Loukas. “It is the institution that functions as a prevention and intervention mechanism within the family to prevent the child from entering an institution. Can we invest in this institution? I believe that as a state and as a society we have not answered convincingly, because we have not fully believed in foster care—even those of us working in child protection.”