As I am about to get on an airplane again, to go home tomorrow, it seems like a good moment to look back on the weeks I have spent in India and the work I have done here.
As many of you know, before I founded Why Family-Based Solutions, I ran Orphanage Projects. This trip has been an interesting juxtaposition of the work of those two. Having spent half of it on strategising for deinstitutionalisation and the other half on still improving conditions in several institutions.
As I have mentioned before, I never did the work of Orphanage Projects (improving conditions in institutions) because I thought institutions were a good solution or that they should exist. Rather I did it because in many cases there were no alternatives available yet, and children were literally dying in some of these places – something that hit home again last week when one of the children for whom I had tried to get the care improved passed away. I felt I could not just abandon them to their lot, simply because I would rather institutions did not exist and because in time there would be no need for them.
Although I have shifted my focus towards transforming care, by raising awareness about the need to move towards family-based care, this does not mean that I was just going to pull out of the projects that I have been involved in for many years.
So, the first half of my stay has been spent at a large-scale institution that I have been involved with since 2011 and that last year I managed to convince of the need to transform care to family-based care. That process was set in motion in June, but had encountered some obstacles along the way, and by the time I arrived this year, it looked about to grind to a halt.
Together with the Care Transformation Team there, I looked at what was causing the delays and lack of progress. I provided some training and awareness raising for different levels of the organisation that had an impact on the ability of the team to do their work. And I locked myself in a room with the team for a few days to map out the next few steps to take, broken down into manageable, concrete actions, which we put on a timeline. By the end of my visit there we all felt very optimistic about the continuation of the process.
Then I went to New Delhi, to meet with representatives of CERI, an organisation that is establishing foster care and other family-based solutions in India at the government level and that has agreed to help us on our journey. I gave a presentation on the work done to date, the obstacles identified and the plans for going forward. And together we discussed and brainstormed about what role everyone can play in the process to make sure that the right support is provided at all stages. This was a very productive meeting.
From there I travelled to the south of the country, where I have worked together with a local NGO since 2010 to help improve conditions in four state-run homes for children and adults with special needs. Since unfortunately the state government representatives are not yet ready to hear arguments for deinstitutionalisation, here the work has been as of old. I have been providing on the job training for the staff hired by the local NGO, and this year I was lucky enough to have some of the government staff and even some superintendents attend the trainings as well. Hopefully this will give a boost to the attempts to improve the lives of the people living in those homes. In one of the homes the buy-in of the superintendent was greater than we have seen before, so we have high hopes for this one.
Of course, politics and a sense of entitlement on the government side were present, as usual. However, after all these years I am well used to that. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised by how receptive some government officials turned out to be. I have definitely seen a lot worse.
So, all in all, I count this trip as a success on a variety of different front. And although, as usual, it was full-on and somewhat exhausting, it was certainly worth it.
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