ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the focus will be on children who have been placed in residential care (children living in substitute homes), and the obligations these cases create for professionals in child protection services and among other caregivers, with reference to Article 12 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Professionals within child protective services and direct caregivers have a particular responsibility for these children, as children in public care are therefore outside a normal family context while still having the same core human needs, such as the need to feel loved. Using examples from an ethnographic study in Estonia, the aim is to reflect on the concept of love through the disciplinary lens of new sociological research on childhood and children’s rights, specifically, rights-based child residential care. In addition, citizenship is considered in this chapter to complement the discussion about children’s autonomy, participation and need to feel loved and how this element can be placed within the context of rights-based child residential care. The empirical example considers children in an Estonian context, although the topics may apply to other countries.
