Abstract
It is essential that the child’s individual needs determine the required services and how these can give adequate responses to children’s problems. In Hungary, the child protection system is driven by less established professional principles, service planning and provision are of an ad hoc nature, child protection services lack any conscious design. The present study is based upon main qualitative results obtained from the research subject of “Is the State a Good Parent?”. Our goal is to reveal how the child’s needs are met in the system of the Hungarian child protection services (institutional and foster care), in what way the system can serve best the interests of the child, what systemic flaws can be identified according to child protection experts opinion.