Model for Setting Up Alternative Care System: Awareness-Raising & Advocacy 2

Part 8 of the explanation with the ToC: Last Thursday, an overview was given about the kind of issues that require awareness-raising and advocacy and why this is important to take seriously. In this blog, more information will be given on this, and on breaking the news that you are planning to move from institutional to family-based care.

The transition process should be undertaken in a country-specific way, being culturally sensitive. The aim is not to impose so-called ‘Western’ values. However, this does not necessarily mean that one should shrink away the moment the complaint is heard that ‘this is a foreign idea, and we don’t need that.’ Institutionalisation is a foreign idea that was adopted in many countries around the world. While things like ‘foster care’ and ‘equal rights’ might sound foreign, because the terms are unknown in the local culture, but when you look more closely at the local culture and traditions, you generally find that these concepts are already embedded, just under a different name. This is something to be aware of when you set up your awareness-raising campaign.

When setting up an awareness-raising campaign, attention should not just be given to what you need to raise awareness about. It is also important to know who needs to receive the message and what is the most effective way to reach those people. Timing is important here. It may be tempting to leave advocacy and awareness-raising until later because it seems to have so little to do with getting the children out. However, it is essential that this starts at a very early stage and that it is well underway before anyone starts talking about moving children into the community, recruiting foster carers and so on. By the time you get to that, you need to have the awareness-raising campaign well underway to clear the ground for you. If you start bringing out the message, for example, that there is nothing to fear about HIV positive people living in the community at the same time as you are asking people to take an HIV positive child into their home, they are going to be far less inclined to take you seriously and to really listen.

Telling relevant people – government representatives, the social workforce, the management of the institutions that will be part of the transition of care, the staff in those institutions and the children in those institutions – about the plans to change the alternative care system and to move children into family-based care, can be said to be part of the awareness-raising strategy. This is not something that should be done out of hand, or where you can afford to allow people to find out for themselves in time. If information about this comes out in an uncontrolled way, in the form of half-information and rumours, it is likely to cause fear, resentment and a lot of resistance from any of the groups just mentioned. So part of your strategy on how to inform all of these groups at the right time, in the right way, has to include a plan on how to keep the information from getting out prematurely.

The children will usually be the last ones to informed because it is necessary to wait until you are able to give enough clear and concrete information about what they can expect to happen before you tell them. However, the children should be told as soon as you have enough information to be able to give them a clear picture and to reassure them, it should not be left until they are about to leave, the children too need some time to process the information and to get used to the upcoming changes in their lives. In a way, the preparation begins right at the start of the transition, by being extremely careful that children do not find out about the plans to move them out, until concrete information can be given in a way that is clear and appropriate for their age, about exactly what is going to happen and how long the children can expect the process to take. These things will not become clear until a relatively late stage in the process, generally not until after the individual assessments have been completed and a start has been made with the designing and setting up of new services. Until that time, every effort has to be made to prevent information to leak out because if the plans to close the institution come out as small fragments of information, this is going to lead to rumours that are likely to take on very extreme forms in record time, and this is going to lead to a lot of fear and anxiety among the children.  To prevent this from happening, plans for deinstitutionalisation should not be discussed in places where they might be overheard by people not actually involved in, or informed about, the process.

Once you do have enough information to be able to give the children a clear and reassuring message, with concrete points about where, when and how they will be moved – or when they will find out -, combined with the message that the best placement will be found for each individual child and that no child is going to be left behind (because this is going to be their biggest fear). There should also be an emphasis on the fact that whether someone leaves earlier or later is no reflection on their worth or their chances of a placement. All children should receive this information at the same time. Whether it is a good idea to give it to all of them together, depends on the age range and range of development(al delay) that is present in the institution. If the range of ages or levels of understanding is very wide, it may be better to split them up into groups with similar levels of understanding and then to have these groups of children hear the news from different people, in separate rooms. However, it should still be done at the same time. Because if one group of children has been told and then they tell another group of children who may not quite get the complete message, the same problems as that of the rumours mentioned above will occur.

As indicated by the long, square arrow, awareness-raising and lobbying is not something that takes place at one moment in the process, it is something that should continue throughout. Changing people’s minds does not happen overnight. It is something that needs a lot of time and effort, and that often needs to be repeated and reinforced over time. It is also possible, once you have been successful in breaking down the stigma and discrimination on the most debilitating issues, that you discover other issues that need to be addressed. These may have been less obvious in the shadow of other topics, but now that they have moved out of that shadow, they may turn out to be quite significant.

If you would like to read the explanation with the model from the very start, you can go HERE.

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