Dejan Zavec on foster care: 'It was my home, these were my people'

In March 2026, Slovenia was home to 725 children and young adults in foster care, with 564 foster families providing support. The fundamental aim of foster care is not typically adoption, but rather to offer a secure and stable environment for children until they can reunite with their biological families or until another lasting solution is established. On average, children remain in foster care for approximately seven years.

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The word sounds secondary: a child is a child, regardless of what kind of family they have, where they come from, they are not to blame for their roots and for the family they were born into. Foster families do not 'raise' children, but we raise them.

Various factors can lead a child to enter foster care. These reasons commonly include experiences of violence, parental addiction, significant emotional distress, or simply the inability of parents to adequately raise a child. Irena Zajc, a social worker and foster parent herself, noted in a podcast that there appears to be a recent rise in addiction-related issues among parents. While she couldn't definitively pinpoint the most frequent reasons, she observed that many parents struggle to fulfill their parental roles in a way that allows a child to grow up in a healthy environment conducive to proper personal development.

Zajc emphasized that children would not need to be placed in foster care if their parents were in a stable condition. Boxing champion Dejan Zavec shared his personal experience, revealing that family violence and alcoholism were among the reasons he entered foster care. He lived in foster care from roughly his third or fourth year of primary school until he turned 18, initially with a relative who already had five children, and later with his coach. Zavec stated he never felt deprived or out of place during this time and did not dwell on the term 'foster child' or 'foster care.'

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Children would not be in foster care if the parents were okay.

However, Zajc expressed criticism towards the term 'foster care,' finding it sounds secondary. She believes a child is a child, regardless of their family background or origin; they are not to blame for their roots. Foster families, she clarified, do not merely 'raise' children but actively nurture and guide them. Despite recent legislative changes and increases in foster care allowances, there has not been a corresponding rise in the number of foster families, raising questions about the reasons behind this trend.

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In foster care, I was from about the third or fourth grade of primary school, and then until I was 18.