At the end of last year, I attended an online course organised by Harvard X: Child Protection: Child Rights in Theory and Practice. It was an interesting course that gave a very good overview of what Child Rights and Child Protection entail, looking in detail at several aspects, and also providing insight into what is needed to work towards effective Child Protection. On this latter subject, one of the issues that came up was that in the past – and to a certain extent still – the tendency was to use a siloed approach to individual child protection issues, which usually led to limited success.
Continue reading “Start with the Institution, Cover Wider Child Protection”Author: Florence
I am the founder of and consultant at Family-Based Solutions. I have started this website and this community, and I am the moderator. I have been involved in alternative care since 2007, having been involved up close in China, Brazil, India, Kenya and Myanmar.
Initially I ran another NGO dedicated to improving the chance of survival and the quality of life of children in institutions, over time getting more and more involved with family-based alternatives and community services. In 2018 I folded the previous NGO and founded Family-Based Solutions. You can find more information on what I do now on the other pages of this website.
The Promise of Institutions
I have mentioned it in various ways on various occasions, but I think it is important to lift this point out and look at it closely. The point being that children ending up in institutions is not just about push-factors – such as not having anywhere else to go – there are major pull-factors. If you are not aware of this and do not take it into account, it will not be possible to avoid the unnecessary separation of children from their families or to successfully remove children from institutions.
Continue reading “The Promise of Institutions”Investing in Services and People
The call is often heard that more money needs to be spent on social protection, child protection and universal services like education and healthcare. Very often this is true when compared to spending on defence or tax breaks (or loopholes) for big corporations, the spending on these areas lags behind significantly, which leads both to human suffering and bigger expenses to the public purse down the line. However, in a way it is also misleading.
Continue reading “Investing in Services and People”What a Year!
The year is drawing to a close again, so it’s time to think back over what it brought us. It certainly was unlike anything we could have predicted a year ago. And while COVID-19 as a disease does not hit children as hard as it does adults, children have been very severely affected by the pandemic, the restrictions to keep it under control, and the actions, or lack thereof, with regards to mitigating the impact on the population.
Continue reading “What a Year!”A Story for Christmas
Today’s blog is not a Christmas story. However, Christmas is a time for storytelling, and also a time to contemplate how things may not always be what they seem. And so I want to share a story with you about a girl whom I have known for some time and about what happened to her over the past few months.
Continue reading “A Story for Christmas”Dealing with Traumatised Teenagers
As mentioned in the previous blog (HERE) last month, I attended the online conference: Trauma Informed Practice Using Biopsychosocial Models to Promote Recovery organised by ICTC and IRCT. In this blog, I want to mention the presentation given by Jane Herd, who shared her experiences working with ‘troubled’ teenagers. I feel what she said was very important because particularly when it comes to teenagers there is a tendency to blame all ‘misbehaviour’ to their age and ‘unwillingness’ to control themselves. Pointing out the ways in which traumatised teenagers are quite simply unable to self-regulate, will hopefully lead to more understanding.
Continue reading “Dealing with Traumatised Teenagers”Diverse Outcomes After Trauma
Last month, I attended the online conference: Trauma Informed Practice Using Biopsychosocial Models to Promote Recovery organised by ICTC and IRCT. It was, once again, a very interesting and useful event, that provided much food for thought. In this blog, I want to address some of the points brought up by Matt Woolgar, one of the speakers, and next week I will write about Jane Herd’s contribution.
Continue reading “Diverse Outcomes After Trauma”HIV Awareness-Raising
Today is World AIDS Day. While the situation for people who are infected with HIV has changed a lot since World AIDS Day was first announced, in some ways things seem to have changed hardly at all. When I work with institutions that house children with HIV to transition to family-based care, the biggest obstacle that we run into is not the children’s health issues or medical needs, it is still stigma and discrimination.
Continue reading “HIV Awareness-Raising”Learning to Live Independently
Last week, the blog explained the difference between real community-based care and children who are simply raised in a building that is located within the community. This week, I want to explain why the difference is so important. It has everything to do with how children normally gradually are prepared for living as independent adults.
Continue reading “Learning to Live Independently”Community-Based Care
The need for family-based and community-based alternative care has been mentioned often in these blogs. Many decades of research has shown that children do much better when they grow up in a family and as part of a community. However, it is important to understand what community-based care really means because too often there is a misunderstanding about this, with harmful effects on the child.
Continue reading “Community-Based Care”