Grybauskaite and Butkevicius at loggerheads over foster care system

On August 26, 2015, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite accused the country's government of inactivity regarding the reform of the foster care system. 

She added the ruling coalition lacks political will and understanding.

Describing the current foster care situation as "completely intolerable", Grybauskaite said the system “is a responsibility of the whole ruling coalition and government."

"It seems this government is only capable of setting up commissions, talking, discussing, promising and doing nothing,” Grybauskaite said in an interview with Lithuania’s national radio station, LRT. “It’s important [to them] to procrastinate.”

Meanwhile, Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevicius, has rejected Grybauskaite’s criticisms.

“No commissions are set up unnecessarily,” said Butkevicius. He then underlined it would be impossible to move children from foster homes into families without any educational research.

"For children to be quickly taken from foster homes into families, very serious educational research is needed,” he continued. 

“I can say a lot about this as my wife's parents have brought up a child from a foster home.”

Grybauskaite’s comments come come in response to an incident on August 25, when an 11-year-old boy died after falling out of a window at a foster home in Kaunas.