PREPARATION FOR INDEPENDANT LIFE OF CHILDREN LIVING IN FOSTER HOMES: ENTREPRENEURIAL COMPETENCIES

Abstract

Over the last decades, an increase in the number of studies on the problems of children who have lost parental care and are living in foster homes has been observed. The purpose of foster homes for children is to ensure education, care, social services and other appropriate conditions to children, as well as to maintain the environment where they could grow, develop and prepare for independent life in the society. Educational activity of the foster homes must be mainly focused on developing social competences of children which would help them to integrate into society, be more successful in various social contexts, and live active social life. Development of the entrepreneurial competencies is also particularly significant in achieving those goals. The entrepreneurial competencies allow finding your place in the society and promoting your social advancement which is particularly important to children who have lost parental care and live in foster homes. But can entrepreneurship be taught? Scholars agree on this point by stating that it is possible to teach functional abilities of entrepreneurship, to transfer knowledge, but natural abilities of entrepreneurship cannot be taught. People are born with entrepreneurial abilities, but higher level of entrepreneurial competence will be reached if entrepreneurial skills are developed.
So, to what extent are children in institutional care in Lithuania ready for life? The survey tries to find out whether education of children living in foster homes in Lithuania covers entrepreneurship, whether the children consider that they have enough entrepreneurial competencies, and how they understand entrepreneurship. The said questions define problem of the survey.
Purpose of the survey is to ascertain the attitude of children living in foster homes towards their entrepreneurial competencies. Data collection and analysis methods: scientific literature and document analysis, questionnaire, descriptive statistics, T-test for independent samples, graphs. Children from four foster homes participated in the survey. In the opinion of children who live in foster homes their entrepreneurial competencies are not sufficient. It was found out that entrepreneurial competencies are related with education philosophy and living conditions in foster home, i.e. the more conditions are provided for entrepreneurship education, the better development of entrepreneurial competencies is observed. Each foster home provides different conditions for development of entrepreneurial competencies.