Amazing to already be marking half a decade of Family-Based Solutions. It continues to be astonishing how quickly time passes and how fast things keep developing. Five years ago, I certainly would not have thought to hope that I would be looking back on the kind of year I have had. With some things continuing and various new things appearing and new plans being formed.
Over the past year, I have continued to provide guidance to the FBC (family-based care) team of Snehalaya in India. Through weekly meetings, case discussions, and training their capacity for reintegrating children from the institution into families and the community continues to grow.
As a board member of Tushinde Foundation, I have been made the safeguarding lead of the UK board. In this capacity, I have monthly safeguarding panel meetings with the team in Kenya to identify and handle current risks and develop strategies to prevent or mitigate future risks to children and to the organisation. For some additional capacity building in line with the discussions during the panel meetings, I have also provided the team with training on attachment: how it is formed, why it is important, what happens when it is absent or problematic and how development around attachment can be (partially) caught up.
As mentioned in last year’s overview, I was approached by UNICEF New York Headquarters to provide continued support on the development of the toolkit for assessing administrative data systems on children in alternative care and adoption/kafalah. I made some revisions based on the feedback they received after my previous contract ended and developed documents to support the implementation of the toolkit in pilot projects. In June this year, I co-facilitated a two-day workshop with UNICEF NYHQ and UNICEF ECARO to introduce the Eastern European and Central Asian countries interested in piloting the toolkit to how it can be implemented. I am very interested to see what will come out of these pilots at the end of this and early next year.
I have launched two books this past year: ‘Understanding the Trauma of Institutionalised Children. To support the child you adopt’ in September last year and ‘Understanding the Trauma of Children from Institutions. A training manual for case workers’ in February of this year. Both books have the same basic content, but are written for separate audiences. You can find more information about these books in the blogs. HERE for the adoption version and HERE for the training manual. The training manual is also available to order in PDF version and in audio version, in the webshop. Aside from reading out the entire training manual for the audio version, I have also recorded a few videos. One on the model I developed, which boils down the training manual to its absolute essence HERE, and one on how the information in the training manual can also be used as advocacy material HERE. At the European conference for social workers in Prague, in May, I gave a workshop based on the training manual.
At the moment, I am working on developing a training programme based on the training manual. Or rather a range of different training programmes, depending on the goal of the organisations or other partners interested in it. It can range from awareness-raising of important issues to take into account – one or more included in the programme as required – to an intensive training programme covering the entire training manual in a way that should enable participants to apply the content in their daily work. As well as the option of training trainers.
In between these bigger things, there have also been smaller interesting opportunities. Such as presenting Eurochild’s Childonomics model together with Maria Herczog at an in-person gathering in March for SOS Children’s Villages Netherlands, and doing an online presentation on determining the best interests of the child in a webinar for Better Care Network Netherlands, in May. And I have just returned from Nepal, where I attended the 5th BiCon on Alternative Care in Asia, an amazing event, about which I have posted on LinkedIn.
Never a dull moment, in other words. And it does not look like I will be bored anytime soon. As I have recently come up with an idea for an ambitious new project that is currently in the early stages of development and that I will announce in a blog once it starts to develop a clearer outline. Representatives of two organisations whom I have discussed this project with have already expressed their interest in discussing the possibility of collaboration on it further.
The past five years have been an incredible journey of discovery, learning, teaching, connecting, and raising awareness. I am very much looking forward to what the coming years will bring.
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