Challenges and Issues Concerning the Deinstitutionalization of Out-of-Home Care for Adolescents

Abstract

The policy of deinstitutionalization of out-of-home care has come to the fore as the list of national tasks announced in July 2022 included as one of its items the ‘preparation of a roadmap’ to guide the policy. Such progress is underpinned by the national focus on ‘the rights of the child’, which stands as a testament to the influence of the UN’s reviews and recommendations of Korea’s sixth and seventh periodic reports on the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, the deinstitutionalization process as it is pursued now is limited in that it concerns transferring only children placed in child welfare facilities pursuant to the Child Welfare Act to family-type care settings. In this article, I examine the background against which the ‘plan for deinstitutionalization of children in out-of-home care’ was developed, and consider what significance these efforts as a national agenda have as means and ends of a paradigm shift in the rights of the child. I also essay a positive interpretation of ‘children in out-of-home care’ and ‘deinstitutionalization’ and argue in the process that the roadmap should broaden to include adolescents in out-of-home care as well.