In the previous blog, I described how, coming up to the 1-year-aniversary of the start of Why Family-Based Solutions, I have been putting a lot of thought into what I would like the organisation to be about and what I can and want to aim to achieve. In today’s blog, I would like to share some of the conclusions that I have drawn.
Awareness raising through blogs will remain an important part of the work of Why Family-Based Solutions, but I want to make contributions to the transformation of care in more practical ways too. This I intend to do through consultancy: by advising larger organisations on how to work more effectively/child-friendly/culturally sensitively/etc.; by working on projects together with other organisations; and by helping people who ask for it to do effective awareness raising and advocacy for family-based alternative care.
Translating that into more concrete terms: I have been in contact with people in Guatemala and Trinidad & Tobago, who want to help set up family-based alternative care and start deinstitionalisation, but are not sure how to approach this. I have been asked if I would be interested to work together with SOS Children’s Villages Netherlands to write a strategy document. I was asked for an information exchange for a research project, by an Alternative Care/Child Protection expert and researcher at Strathclyde University. And I was approached by an organisation in Tanzania about helping them to write their five-year strategic plan for developing community support and family-strengthening. It is not certain that all of this is going to go ahead in practice yet, but nevertheless they are promising possibilities.
I have been asked to present the Alternative Care for Children Around the Globe report (you can find it HERE) at the annual networking day of Better Care Network Netherlands in November. And I have been invited to become a member of Eurochild, which is an amazing opportunity to network and work together with colleagues from all over Europe.
Finally, one of the things that I have been thinking about a lot, is one I already mentioned back in May (HERE): the idea of starting a community where people involved in alternative care from all over the world can come together and exchange experiences and ideas. This is in the process of being made reality. I am developing a forum that will be a platform on which that community can be created, at the moment. This forum will become part of this website and will hopefully become public no later than next month.
Apart from this, I will continue to provide guidance for the deinstitutionalisation of a large-scale institution in India. And I will no doubt continue to publish books to spread awareness about important issues surrounding the need for family-based alternative care and child-protection.
What I haven’t definitely decided yet, is whether to register Why Family-Based Solutions as a charity or as a consultancy business. If anyone has advice or suggestions on that, please let me know in the comments.
I will keep you updated as various things continue to develop. And as you can see, I am not in any danger of getting bored anytime soon.
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Found this write-up interested, added to linkagogo