성인기 전이과정에 있는 보호대상 청소년 지원 방안 ― 특별법 제정의 필요성을 중심으로 ―

Abstract

There are recently more than 50,000 children looked after by local authorities in Korea, which is closely related to the weakening of family function of caring children. The care service provision by local authorities ends either at the age of 18 of looked after for children(in the case of the Child Welfare Act), or by lapse of service provision period(in the case of the Young Persons Welfare Assistance Act). Lots of young persons leaving care provided for by local authorities transit to adulthood without proper assistance from parents, which results in them suffering from difficulties and being forced to face disadvantageous positions compared to young persons cared by parents. To properly cope with such social problems, the Children Welfare Act was reformed in 2011 to introduce the assistance system to young persons leaving local authorities’ care and the budget was enormously increased in 2019. This paper criticizes that the eligibility for assistances provided to young persons leaving care is limited to those young persons who have been cared by the Children Welfare Act, and that the current assistance system focuses on economic ones without paying attention to individual needs, not on any emotional and psychological assistance. Based on this critics, this paper suggests some alternatives. For this purpose, this paper analyses the role and function of parental responsibilities by legal parents, concluding that parents should help and assist their child to grow up as an adult who can make decisions by himself and herself with self-responsibility. Then, this paper argues that the local authority, being social parents as corporate parents, has to play the same role to the looked after children, namely to help and assist them to successfully transit to adulthood like any reasonable parents do. Based on this analysis, this paper suggests the purpose, the contents and directions of the assistance by local authorities. This paper argues that local authorities’ assistance to young persons leaving care is necessary for sustainable development of the society and can be a way to accumulate social capital, based on which new value in the society can be created. Lastly this paper suggests a special legislation of state assistance to young persons leaving care and main contents of such legislation.