How Hungary takes children away from poor parents

Children are separated from their parents unjustly and for years, or never allowed to return home: that is what Hungarian child protection has done in recent years. The Flemish government is going to investigate in Hungary whether adoption from that country may still be possible.

'If I hadn't gotten help, my children wouldn't be with me now.' Barbara, a woman with curls and an engaging smile, sits beaming with pride in a grimy armchair. Next to her sit four mischievous little rascals, her sons. They were taken away one by one by the Hungarian child protection services. The reason? Poverty in the family.

Civil rights organization TASZ (also known abroad as HCLU) helps Barbara and other parents to challenge unfair decisions. For Barbara, it took years, and she will never get that lost time back. She is the victim of a child protection system that is flawed on all sides.

'Families in Hungary should primarily solve their own problems, rather than seek support and guidance from the state,' says the international children's rights organisation ISS. In 2022, the organisation conducted an analysis of adoption and child protection in Hungary on behalf of the Flemish government. The aim? Based on this information, the Flemish Centre for Adoption will decide whether adoptions from Hungary will continue to be permitted in the future.

Poverty or neglect?

Hungarian child protection suffers from a chronic lack of resources, everyone agrees. For example, there is very little money for social workers to support families. As a result, they have to support more families than the legal maximum of 45. The result is that vulnerable families receive little help to stay afloat, creating precarious situations for their children.

According to the international Convention on the Rights of the Child and experts in children's rights, the first response in such a situation should be to provide as much support as possible to the family. But in Hungary, the response of the authorities is often a removal from the home.

It is often Roma families living in poverty. 'Why do you think these children don't go to school or don't show good hygiene? Because of poverty,' says Agnes Lux , a child rights expert at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. 'But the reports from the social services then say 'neglect', because poverty cannot be an official reason to take the child away.'

'Parents rarely appeal these decisions. Not because they don't want their children back, but because they face major financial and practical hurdles.'

Ilona Boros, civil rights organization TASZ

UNICEF shares the concern for these children. It states that the lack of parental care in Roma communities is a consequence of the extreme poverty within that group. And out-of-home placement conflicts with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: poverty cannot and should not be a reason for it.

Back home again

This does happen, as the Hungarian civil rights organization TASZ first noticed in 2016. That year, they started the Missing Memories campaign. The reason was the out-of-home placement of 35 young children from Roma families, in a poor village with a few hundred inhabitants.

During that campaign, the organization won a number of legal cases to bring wrongly placed children back home. For example, there is the story of Erszébet and Laszlo: their children were taken away in June 2020 because the house they lived in was considered unsafe. The mayor of their hometown had intervened to solve the housing problem, but to no avail. The six siblings were placed with three different foster families. TASZ made sure that the children could return to their parents after four months.

But sometimes it takes much longer. Barbara’s offspring were taken from a village with inadequate social services. It took several years for the children to return home. After the separation, they struggled with bedwetting, speech disorders and behavioral problems.

Palma (then 10 years old) and her mother Krisztina also had a two-year separation. The authorities had taken the child away based on her mother's financial problems and limited intelligence. Wrongly, the court ruled.

The legal aid to affected families was crucial, says Ilona Boros of TASZ: 'Parents rarely appeal these decisions. Not because they don't want their children back, but because they face major financial and practical hurdles.'

The illegal divorces even reached the Hungarian Supreme Court in 2023. The European Roma Rights Centre (ERRC) has been litigating against the Hungarian government for years. It complained that the percentage of Roma children in child protection in Nograd County is very high. 20% of the population belongs to the Roma minority, while 80% of the children in the system have a Roma background.

“The Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that children are discriminated against because of their socio-economic status, but that ethnicity plays no role in this,” said Vivien Brassói of the ERRC. “However, the ruling is a major victory, because it is precisely Roma families who are living in poverty.” Following the ruling, the Supreme Court gave the Hungarian government a deadline to address discrimination in child protection services. But according to the ERRC, this was ignored.

Babies without daycare

A successful reunification of parent and child is quite rare and extremely labor-intensive, according to TASZ. They have already brought 15 children back home. The harsh reality is that most children who are wrongfully taken away never return home.

That is why the independent NGO decided three years ago to change course. They will no longer initiate new legal cases themselves, but will spend those resources on developing a free legal aid service. They want to focus more and more on prevention and support for vulnerable families, so that they know their rights themselves, before it is too late.

By the end of 2024, the service had already received 267 questions and requests for assistance. 

In total, almost 24,000 children and young people in Hungary grow up in state care instead of in their own family. Preferably, the child goes to a family environment, such as with relatives or in foster care. If that is not possible, a stay in a facility is possible.

'The parents do not know that their child can be adopted if they do not show up for contact moments.'

Ilona Boros, civil rights organization TASZ

The Hungarian government does not carry out this task alone. Before 2010, youth care was mainly in the hands of local governments and NGOs, but today youth care organizations are usually linked to the Catholic Church. This change was implemented by the government of Viktor Orbán. 'The state's solution seems to be to increase the involvement of the Church', says Szilvia Gyurkó of the Hungarian children's rights organization Hintalovon. 'That shows that it is outsourcing its task, and the problem.' She refers to the dire shortage of foster parents. Hungarian law states that children under the age of twelve must grow up with a foster family, and not in a facility. According to SOS Children's Villages Hungary, no fewer than 2,000 additional foster parents are needed to make this happen.

The lack of foster families has dramatic consequences. In March 2024, the Hungarian news site Nepszava reported that around thirty babies with an 'irregular legal status' were staying in a hospital in Borsod, in the northeast of the country. These are children who can no longer 'fit in' with child protection and for whom there is simply no place to stay. Civil rights organisation TASZ has also received signals that babies are 'waiting' in various hospitals for a place in a foster family.

Double standard

Due to the shortage in foster care, many children still end up in institutions. In 2022, there were around 7,000, according to the ISS analysis. They stay there for an average of five years, partly because there is 'no capacity, resources and commitment to reunite the families'.

Children under twelve are not allowed to grow up in a facility according to the law. But that law contains a double standard, says Ilona Boros of TASZ. Children with a disability, behavioral problems, psychiatric problems, drug problems or victims of child trafficking fall outside the rule. No foster family needs to be found for them, they can go to a facility. Boros finds this 'scandalous' and calls it 'institutionalized discrimination'. 'Most underprivileged children from deep poverty fall into this category. In concrete terms, this means that many Roma children are placed in children's homes, while their non-Roma peers stay in foster families.'

Contact break

Vulnerable children within the child protection system often flow onto adoption lists. How come? Ilona Boros of TASZ sees the same scenario time and again. 'An adoption is possible if the parent gives up the child. That hardly ever happens. But child protection can also proceed with adoption if the parent misses a number of contact moments with the child.' Striking: the required break in contact for adoption used to be six months, but the Orbán government reduced it to three months in 2020.

Parents also have to be physically present at contact moments, phone calls and letters do not count. Due to their vulnerable position, parents often miss that appointment several times, Boros continues. 'The institutions where the children stay are impossible to reach by public transport from the isolated areas where the parents live. They also do not know that their child can be adopted if they do not show up.'

This has far-reaching consequences: 'It is heartbreaking when parents send us an adoption decision for which the appeal period has expired because they did not understand the letter. Due to their social situation, it is simply impossible to meet the government's inflexible conditions.'

Other preference

Children who receive such an adoption decision must first be presented for adoption to Hungarian adoptive parents. That is pretty much the most important principle in adoption. According to figures from the Hungarian government, at the end of 2023 there were more candidates than children registered: 2,733 adoptive parents, compared to 1,998 children. The list of candidates could actually be a lot longer, because since the introduction of new regulations in 2020, only married couples are allowed to adopt. Because gay marriage is prohibited in Hungary, many see this rule as a measure that further erodes gay rights.

And there is something else at play. The preferences of Hungarian parents do not always match the children on the list. 'Roma children, older children, children with a disability or chronic illness have less chance of domestic adoption. This is because the majority of adoptive parents in Hungary still want a healthy, non-Roma baby', says Vivien Brassói of the ERRC. The less desirable profiles remain and are often adopted abroad.

In 2023, 166 Hungarian children found a new home in another country, according to a request for information from the Hungarian government. Most of them go to Italy and the United States. If you look at the number of adoptions from Hungary per 100,000 inhabitants, our country comes in fourth place. Hungary is also a very new adoption partner for Belgium. The first adoption in Belgium from Hungary took place in 2021. Since then, 15 Hungarian children have come to Flanders, and none to Wallonia, we learn from figures from the Flemish Center for Adoption.

Orange stamp

Whether adoptions from Hungary will remain possible in Belgium in the future is still a matter of guesswork. The Flemish Centre for Adoption decided in November 2023, based in part on the ISS analysis, to give Hungary an orange stamp. This means that a working visit is required before a final decision is made. The visit was planned for the end of 2024, but has not yet taken place. The intention is to talk to the Hungarian partners on site 'to gain a better insight' into discrimination and support for families.

But to what extent is a country like Hungary open to such a conversation and to improvement? According to NGOs, the problem lies in the unwillingness of the Hungarian government to support vulnerable families. 'The sad thing is that the situation that leads to the removal of children cannot be solved by lawyers and judges', Ilona Boros concludes. 'That requires real social policy. Unfortunately, nothing has changed in recent years, and it is only getting worse.' 

MO* contacted the competent Hungarian ministries several times for a response, but received no reply.