Children and adults gathered at the Tatabánya County Hall at the end of November 2022 for a joyful event and celebration. The event honored children living with foster parents or in group homes who achieved outstanding academic results during the 2021–2022 school year. The event was covered by the local newspaper and on the website of the Szent Ágota Child Protection Service, the child protection agency that organized the awards ceremony and operates a network of foster parents.

One foster parent was mentioned by name in both reports. The woman accompanied two sixth-grade girls who are in her care.

The local newspaper reported that she is very proud of the girls, one of whom wants to be a dog groomer and the other a chef. “According to her, it is necessary to encourage the children and check in with them often, but both have clear goals, so they are eager to learn,” the paper quoted the woman as saying, adding that she has been a foster parent for more than ten years and has cared for more than ten children. The report on the Szent Ágota website also made special mention of the foster mother, highlighting that she considers it important for the children to learn and set goals for themselves, which motivates them.

The article is no longer available on the agency’s website, as it was removed sometime after February 19, 2026. This date in February was significant because it marked the day  the court issued a final judgment convicting the woman of abusing the children living with her.

The verdict stated that between 2017 and 2023, the woman regularly abused the children entrusted to her care. She hit them with her hands, a broomstick, and a wooden spoon, and verbally abused them with obscene language. For example, if the oldest child reached into the refrigerator without permission, she would strike his hand or back with a wooden spoon. She would poke his back with a knife to make him stand up straight.  She once broke a wooden spoon on one of the girls’ backs.

In Hungary, two-thirds of children in state care—15,000 children—are raised by foster parents. Although children’s homes are often described as closed worlds, the outside world knows little more about how these children live behind the closed doors of their foster parents’ homes.

In recent months, Direkt36 has investigated how it is possible that children are sometimes placed with foster parents who are unfit or even abusive. We spoke with more than a dozen child protection professionals and sources familiar with the foster care system, and requested data on foster care networks operating in Hungary.

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Our research shows that the system is flawed. A foster parent who has successfully completed the selection process once is very rarely flagged during subsequent checks. The abusive foster mother in Tatabánya also passed the mandatory regular reviews without issue.

Although the system has been tightened in several areas since the abuses she committed, serious problems remain. Even after the changes in 2024, there are still factors that could make it difficult to get children to safety in time when danger arises.

The most significant of these factors is a systemic problem: there are few available spots, and there is a massive shortage of foster parents. But another factor is that there can also be unpleasant legal consequences if a child is removed from a foster parent too hastily.

A difference in quality

For many years in Hungary, the general professional consensus has been that children who, for whatever reason, cannot remain with their biological families should not be placed in institutions, but rather raised in foster care.

Foster care differs from adoption in that it is compensated, and it is not permanent; ideally, it lasts only until the child finds adoptive parents or can return to their biological family. On paper, according to the law, children under the age of 12 should always be placed with foster parents, but in practice this is not possible due to a shortage of suitable foster parents.

According to the latest data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office for 2025, there are 5,390 foster parents working in the country. Experts estimate that this is at least 2,000 fewer than are needed. Their numbers have been declining for years.

In Hungary, there are currently 41 foster care networks affiliated with 30 child welfare institutions. The government completely withdrew from this sector a few years ago, and churches have largely taken its place. Institutions operated by churches have an advantage over other providers because they receive additional funding, meaning they get more state money for the same tasks.

The networks differ from one another in many ways. For example, the financial benefits or services provided to foster parents vary. They also differ in terms of how transparent they are to the outside world, or how thoroughly they address cases of child abuse. The Integrated Legal Protection Services, operating under the Ministry of the Interior, wrote about this with restrained but palpable criticism in its 2023 report: “Investigations into cases of child abuse do take place, but the quality of these investigations varies by foster care network.”

No one indicated that there was a problem

In the Tatabánya case, the foster care network involved did not indicate that they considered themselves at fault.

In its response to our questions, the Szent Ágota Child Protection Service wrote that the woman, who was later convicted of abuse, had been employed as a foster parent for 10 years. During this time, she cared for 11 children—4 to 5 at a time—and not a single report of suspected abuse was ever filed against her: neither the children, the foster care counselor, the guardians, nor the preschools or schools reported any issues. According to the Szent Ágota, not only did no one report any issues regarding suspected abuse, but there were also no reports regarding the care and supervision of the children or the foster parent’s cooperation.

What was happening in the Tatabánya home finally came to light after one of the children, who had already been removed from the foster parent’s care, broke the silence and began speaking out about the abuse. After that, the other children also shared what they had experienced.

The woman, now retired and previously with no criminal record, initially denied the charges during the proceedings against her, but her claims were contradicted by the children’s accounts and forensic psychological expert opinions.

When delivering the verdict, the judge made some remarks that showed leniency toward the foster parent. He spoke about how the woman “struggled with her life situation” and said it was a fact that “the state did not stand behind her.”

However, the response received from the agency states that the foster parent did receive help when she asked for it. They wrote that the foster parent counselor visited the family at least every three weeks, but if any problems arose, she spoke with the foster family immediately or by phone several times a week.

“For the foster parent, adolescent issues posed a challenge, which she reported to the network, and she received the necessary assistance. Together with the child protection guardian, the children were taken to a psychologist or child psychiatrist when necessary,” the institution replied to our inquiry. They emphasized:  the children “never once reported abuse.”

Since the foster parent from Tatabánya pleaded guilty at the preliminary hearing and waived her right to a trial, the case was wrapped up very quickly in court. Shortly after the woman arrived at the courthouse on that windy February morning, wearing a red jacket and accompanied by her husband and attorney, the prosecutor read the indictment. As a result of her admission, the charges listed therein were cemented and included as facts in the verdict.

The Tatabánya District Court found the 67-year-old woman guilty of four counts of endangering minors, for which she received a two-year suspended prison sentence and was permanently barred from any work or activities involving children.

However, she would not be able to become a foster parent even without such a strict ban from the court. There are, in fact, a few simple requirements for becoming a foster parent. For example, applicants must be at least 24 years old and have a clean criminal record; furthermore, there can be no pending criminal proceedings against the applicant for a series of serious crimes.

Meeting these requirements is only the very first step toward becoming a foster parent. In addition, a background check is conducted on applicants, a psychological suitability assessment is performed, and since the summer of 2024, foster parents have also been subject to what is known as an “impeccable lifestyle test.” Foster parents must also complete training before a child can be placed with them.

She passed every evaluation

The suitability of foster parents must be reviewed regularly—previously every three years, and since 2024, every two years. The case in Tatabánya raises questions about the reliability of this automated screening process built into the system. In fact, the woman was found suitable to continue her foster care activities at every review.

The data show that it is extremely rare for foster parents to fail such a review.

Direkt36 contacted all foster care networks and the institutions behind them with a standardized questionnaire focused primarily on quantitative data. We did not receive responses from 11 of the 41 networks, but we did receive—at least partial—data from the others. The respondents represent a total of 4,286 foster parents and 12,581 foster children. This means that, based on the responses, we cannot present a complete picture, but we can draw conclusions covering roughly four-fifths of the domestic foster care system.

The institutions that responded to Direkt36’s questions conducted regular suitability reviews for nearly 3,000 foster parents in 2025. The responses indicate that 10 foster parents failed this review.

There are likely more problematic cases than this. Not only did the woman from Tatabánya pass the routine screening without issue, but so did the foster parent from Nyíregyháza, whose horrific story even made the news.

“Can I leave this worm at home?”—this was one of the Messenger messages police found when they reviewed the data on a seized cell phone. The message was written by K.K., a foster parent from Nyíregyháza, to her husband on February 12, 2023.

Police examined her phone because a two-year-old boy named Sándor, who had been entrusted to her care, had died.

When police questioned her about the message, the woman said she did not remember the exchange and did not know or believe it had anything to do with Sándor. Investigators, however, thought otherwise. The indictment in the case already stated that the little boy was referred to as a “worm” and a “dog” in the foster parent’s household.

The young boy’s death was ultimately caused not by intentional abuse, but by choking and suffocation. In the early evening of April 12, 2023, Mrs. K.K. fed Sándor a pork and rice dish, but he was unable to chew and swallow the solid food properly. When the little boy choked and began to suffocate, the woman did not call for professional help.

The tragedy became widely publicized in the spring of 2023, shocking the nation. In addition to the tragic death, there was a disturbing detail: instead of seeking help, Mrs. K.K. placed the body in the trunk of her car and drove around the streets of Nyíregyháza for days. To this day, there is no explanation for why she did this.

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Mrs. K.K. was also one of those foster parents who had passed their most recent routine review, if not with a “highly satisfactory” rating, then at least with a “satisfactory” one.

Insight into the lives of families

In addition to routine reviews, special assessments may be conducted at any time in justified cases involving foster parents. Such assessments are conducted, for example, if a foster parent’s life circumstances change, if their health or mental state deteriorates, or if their behavior warrants it. Based on the figures we received, such special inspections were conducted for approximately 5 percent of foster parents in 2025. Of the total 204 inspections, we are aware of 7 cases where the foster parents were ultimately found to be unsuitable. At one agency, for example, 114 foster parents underwent an extraordinary review last year, and in not a single case was a finding of unsuitability made.

For an extraordinary review to take place at all, someone must first notice that there might be a problem. When it comes to identifying problems, timely reporting, and intervention, one key player could be the foster care counselor, who, employed by the institution behind the foster care network, visits families regularly—at least every three weeks—and thus gains some insight into the families’ lives.

However, the child welfare professionals we interviewed are highly skeptical about the role of these counselors. Many believe that a counselor paid by the institution has no incentive to express a negative opinion about the foster parents.

As one source working as a guardian put it, “a counselor isn’t going to undermine their own agency”—in other words, a foster care counselor is reluctant to put the foster care network, where they themselves work alongside the foster parent, in an awkward position.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that foster parents are not always honest with their counselors. A former foster parent told Direkt36 that they didn’t dare be honest with the network’s staff because they feared that if they reported problems or difficulties, the children in their care would be taken away from them. “So, if you had any kind of mental health issue and felt you needed a psychologist, you didn’t go to the psychologist in your own network, but rather to a private one, so they wouldn’t say you were unfit,” they said.

In addition to foster parent counselors, child protection guardians who are not affiliated with any network also regularly visit families—or, more precisely, the children entrusted to their care. However, guardians in Hungary are extremely overburdened; they often have far more children under their care than the law allows. Because of this, visits cannot always take place with the required frequency in practice.

According to the former foster parent, another problem arises when the guardian and the foster care counselor announce their visit in advance instead of dropping by unexpectedly. “The foster care counselor shouldn’t come to the foster parent by calling ahead to say, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow at 11 a.m.’ Instead, they should show up at 6:30 p.m. and say, ‘Let’s see what’s on the table for dinner!’ Because that’s when the whole picture becomes clear—how everyone treats the children,” she said. Another foster parent source, for example, heard about a family where the foster children aren’t allowed to sit at the table with the foster parents’ own biological children during meals.

The youngest children are the most dependent on visitors: a source who has worked in child protection for decades pointed out that this age group is particularly vulnerable. They are the least likely to be noticed from the outside, since they do not yet attend preschool or school, where it might become apparent if they are not being treated properly. According to another source, who receives information from many foster families, a recurring pattern of neglect involves the child being left in a crib all day, fed sugary drinks from a bottle, while the TV plays continuously in the background.

In the case of older children, in theory, problems might already be noticeable at school, and they could report them, but this did not happen in Tatabánya, for example. One possible explanation for this is that if a child is visibly struggling, they attribute it to the fact that—as one source put it—“well, this is a child living with a foster parent who has a thousand problems.”

Foster parents may also be inspected by child rights representatives working for the Integrated Rights Protection Service (IJSZ), which falls under the Ministry of the Interior. These representatives have the right to visit families without prior notice and speak privately with the foster children.

In practice, however, such inspections are very rare, as there are only 16 child rights representatives working nationwide. So there are only this many to oversee 5,390 foster parents, while they also have numerous other duties, such as visiting children living in children’s homes. Yet, according to a child protection specialist, it would be very important for children to be able to file a complaint if anything bad happens to them, and to be certain that they will not face any retaliation as a result.

Occasionally, government officials may also visit foster parents, as these agencies primarily monitor foster care networks.

At the same time, there is clearly not enough capacity to conduct regular inspections of every single foster parent. The Baranya County Government Office’s 2025 plan, for example, included inspections of a total of fourteen foster parents. Government office inspections typically uncover administrative errors, but it does happen that more serious issues come to light.

In 2024, for example, the Nógrád County Government Office uncovered that, in the case of a church-run network, police reports were not filed in three cases of child abuse—even though this would have been mandatory—and in one case, an extraordinary suitability review of the foster parent was also omitted. “Shouldn’t the state be monitoring not only the foster parents but also the operators?” a source working as a foster parent asked Direkt36.

Since the summer of 2024, when the so-called “impeccable lifestyle” check became mandatory, staff from the National Protection Service—the organization conducting the inspections—have identified 34 cases of lifestyles deemed objectionable among active foster parents.

Psychological screening can be a tricky area

Due to shortcomings in external oversight, the importance of psychological screening for foster parents is becoming even more critical.

When foster parents in Nyíregyháza and Tatabánya began their work, this task was still performed by psychologists affiliated with the foster parent networks. Although a guideline on the selection of foster parents had been drafted a few years ago—which also addressed the methodology of psychological suitability assessments—it was not mandatory, so there were significant differences in this regard between networks. One foster parent source, for example, reported that in their network, people are “rushed through” the psychological test. For some time now, child protection professionals have been calling for the need for independent psychological evaluations.

At one point, the legislature saw it this way as well: since the summer of 2024, psychological suitability assessments have been conducted centrally by staff of a department within the Ministry of the Interior. Now, the minimum requirements are also set forth in a regulation; these include, for example, that the prospective foster parent’s life history must be free of pathological addictions, suicide attempts, or unspecified “sexual deviations.” Psychologists from the various networks still have a role to play in this regard; for example, they may assess the personalities of other adults living in the same household as the prospective foster parent.

We submitted a freedom of information request to the Ministry of the Interior regarding the central psychological assessments. According to their data, psychological assessments of active foster parents very rarely resulted in a “unsuitable” finding. In 2024, 1 out of 113 active foster parents, and in 2025, 10 out of 3,908 active foster parents failed this screening. A much higher proportion of applicants were found to be psychologically unsuitable in the Ministry of the Interior’s assessment: 28 out of 73 in 2024 and 145 out of 812 in 2025.

Conflicting expert opinions

However, it is not always clear when a foster parent becomes psychologically unfit. Direkt36 came across a court case that highlighted this problem.

The case involved an incident that took place in the Transdanubia region in the 2020s. The story began when two separate psychological evaluations concluded that the foster parent, who was caring for five children at the time, was unfit for foster care. After the second result, the employer terminated the foster parent’s employment and notified the relevant child welfare authorities. About a week later,  the children were taken away from her.

The foster parent requested further psychological evaluations, which yielded positive results. Two experts deemed the foster parent suitable for foster care. Following this, the foster parent filed several legal actions against their former employer and won all of them. The court ruled that the foster parent had been unlawfully terminated and ordered the institution to pay compensation for emotional distress.

Fear of such cases is likely one of the reasons why, according to multiple sources, this has been a common practice in recent years—even though it is prohibited by the methodological guidelines. If a foster parent was found to be abusive and the foster care network terminated their services, the legal relationship was terminated by mutual agreement, and no written record of the suspected abuse remained. In such cases, however, the foster parent still has the option to seek employment with another network.

Under pressure: filling the gaps

The system has been overwhelmed for years; there are countless children waiting for placement who are not safe in their own families, but there is nowhere to take them. If everyone who wanted to be a foster parent were suitable for the role, the shortage would disappear, but the reality is far from that: based on the responses to our survey there were more than 2,400 applicants in 2025, but only 298 of them were found suitable.

The large number of children in vulnerable situations places enormous pressure on the institutions.

Industry regulators would like to see no empty, unfilled spots, but experts say it is dangerous if there is no reserve capacity and, in the event of an emergency, no place to transfer a child. Another consequence of the pressure is that there is no way to truly focus on the so-called “match,” that is, to search for and find the foster family that is most ideal for a given child. Instead, they place the child wherever there is still a spot available. According to one source, this is referred to as “filling a gap.”

“That placement is much less likely to be successful, since we’ve just dropped a child off there: here you go, now you’re supposed to feel good here. Well, things don’t work that way,” explained a source who has been working in child protection for decades.

It is a difficult time for foster parents when someone adopts a child they have raised and grown to love. This pressure also means that it is not always possible to wait until a foster parent in this situation feels ready to take in a new child. For example, a former foster parent told Direkt36 that on one occasion after such a separation—even though she was surrounded by strangers at the time—she broke down crying on the phone while speaking with a psychologist. The psychologist then informed her that she was deemed ready to take in the next child.

The consideration that the child should ideally not be placed too far from their biological family, so that they can continue to meet regularly, is also pushed to the background. Yet this is of great importance because—as a child welfare specialist put it—“if there are no shared experiences, there is no trust, and the parent cannot keep track of the child’s life,” the relationship weakens, and if it breaks down, then the child’s reintegration—that is, their return to their original family—becomes “completely hopeless.”

There are significant regional disparities within the country. There are regions, such as Zala, Vas, and Győr-Moson-Sopron counties, where there are particularly few foster parents, while in the eastern part of the country there are even villages where 40 percent of the children attending the local school live with foster parents.

In 2023, Tímea Szabó, a representative of the party Párbeszéd, urged the establishment of an ad hoc committee in parliament to review and reform the foster care system, but her proposed resolution was not debated by the National Assembly. At the same time, during the committee debate on the proposal, Fidesz MP Gabriella Selmeczi also acknowledged that there is room for improvement in oversight. “Legislation, laws, regulations, and guidelines are useless if they are not enforced, which is why oversight should play a very significant role in the child protection system,” she stated.

The Civil Coalition for Children’s Rights, a professional network comprising civil society organizations and renowned individual experts, has for years been calling for, among other things, the establishment of “adequate financial and moral recognition for foster parents, as well as rigorous selection processes and professional support.”

What the Tisza government plans to do about the problems related to foster parents is, for now, only visible in broad outlines. The party’s platform stated that the delayed and insufficient increase in compensation did not constitute a systemic solution. The platform listed among child protection issues that the sector is “severely underfunded and understaffed” and promised to strengthen the foster care network. Szilvia Gyurkó, a recognized child protection expert for decades, will serve as the state secretary responsible for this area.

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Illustration: Virág Török/Telex