Model for Setting Up Alternative Care System: Capacity Building

Part 10 of the explanation with the ToC: Capacity building is a very general term to indicate things that are needed to make sure that people involved in the project are able to do their jobs or to help where help is needed. It involves:

  • Providing training
  • Creating supportive networks
  • Organising exposure visits
  • Locating or raising funds

Like recruitment, capacity building is something that does not happen at just one point, it is something that needs to be taken care of whenever it becomes clear that there is a need for it. It is often also beneficial to do things like providing training in stages. If you provide a new recruit, who has never been involved in the transition from institutional to family-based care with all the training needed to take care of the entire process in the first month on the job, this will lead to information-overload and the new recruit is unlikely to remember much of what was taught as a result. It may be more useful to start by providing training about why the transition is taking place and on the skills needed to take care of the first few assignments, and then when the recruit has settled in and become comfortable with the jobs assigned, schedule another training session where you give information about the next stage.

Capacity building is not just relevant with regards to your team. You may also want to consider providing training and other forms of capacity building for:

  • Government representatives (local in the case of a grassroots project, or national when working at a larger scale)
  • Child and family judges
  • People who are in good positions to be gatekeepers
  • Organisations that you wish to partner with (at the later stage of setting up services)
  • Community leaders
  • Staff from institutions who are being redirected (later stage)

First Line

In the model, the line between the stages of capacity building and individual assessment is not a hard limit between phases that are completely separated from each other. As was mentioned already many of the issues mentioned so far continue to be relevant, and need to be addressed, at various points of the transition process.

Still, there is a valid reason for placing a line here. Up to this point in the process, the work done was mostly behind the scenes work to prepare the ground for what is coming. It is extremely important work and it tends to take up quite a significant amount of time. However, for people looking on from the outside, it may be hard to recognise that anything has happened because there is relatively little to show for it. In the next stage work will be done that would not have been possible if it could not have been built on the results of the work from the previous stage.

So, essentially this line is to indicate that you now move from a long stretch of hard work with little reward – and indeed often a lot of criticism and pressure to move things along faster – into a phase where your efforts are more likely to be recognised and acknowledged because there is more to show for them on the surface.

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

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