The foster parents' association Life with a Smile ("Zivot s osmijehom") from Karlovac on Monday called on Labour and Social Policy Minister Josip Aladrovic to hold a meeting with foster parents, to "stop avoiding them," and to listen to what they have to say.

The association sent him an open letter prompted by the death of a 2.5-year-old girl from Nova Gradiska, who died in a Zagreb hospital on Sunday due to injuries caused by her mother.

Foster parent Marina Novakovic-Matanic from the Karlovac association said the latest tragedy showed that it is “entirely wrong to believe that the worst biological family is better than no family,” calling on Aladrovic to do something in cooperation with foster parents’ associations to prevent similar tragedies from happening again.

The association is a member of the umbrella foster care association Forum for Quality Foster Care.

Novakovic-Matani said that two weeks ago Forum representatives got an appointment with the minister after trying to meet with him for a year, but when they showed up for the meeting, they were received by a state secretary.

“In the past two and a half years the former minister met with us for 15 minutes while her successor could not spare even 15 minutes,” said Novakovic-Matanic.

“Foster families often care for children who come from families with a criminal past, and they have suggestions to improve the foster care system,” she said, but added that “nobody in the social protection system hears those suggestions.”

Foster parents demand that parents’ meetings with children not take place in foster families because “that puts at risk other foster children,” she said.

The opinion of foster parents in mandatory reports that are submitted to social welfare centers is disregarded, Novakovic-Matanic said, adding that the number of foster parents was falling not because of finances but because they had been left to their own devices for years.

She recalled that foster families have a duty to submit a report every six months on the state of the foster child but that when a case ends up in court, those reports and foster parents’ opinions are not taken into account.