Today is International Women’s Day, something that is celebrated more exuberantly in some countries than in others. Whether or not Women’s Day is celebrated where you are, it is important to give some thought to the position of women and to their achievements.
This is not only useful and important in general, it is also relevant with regards to the efforts to move towards family-based solutions in alternative care.
Continue reading “International Women’s Day”It is possible for individual institutions to decide to start deinstitutionalisation by themselves, at the grassroots level. They can look for ways to support the families of the children in their care, so that the children can go home. They can provide training to the staff working at the institution to give them the skills to become foster parents or small group home caregivers instead, for the children who do not have a home they can go back to.
I am currently involved with an organisation in India that is working not just towards making sure all the children in their care can be moved to family situations, but to create a replicable model that can be followed by others in the country. However, to be able to put together a sustainable system of family-based alternative care, some government involvement is always necessary.
Continue reading “DI: The Government’s Role”When you suggest deinstitutionalisation to the management of a residential childcare institution, you usually have an uphill battle. This is not surprising, because why would they want to put themselves out of existence?
Still, despite it starting out as an uphill battle, it is not a fight lost before it was started. There are actually a lot of good reasons for people running an ‘orphanage’ to choose DI, even if you disregard the ‘it is less harmful to the children’-one.
Continue reading “Why Would An Institution Choose DI?”A very long word, often shortened to DI to save ourselves the trouble, that is thrown around more and more, in various different places. A word of some importance, and therefore important to understand. What exactly do people mean when they talk about deinstitutionalisation and what is involved in the process.
In this blog I will give a brief overview and in the following blogs I will pick out some elements that are mentioned today and look at them more closely, to allow a more thorough understanding to develop.
Continue reading “What Does Deinstitutionalisation Mean?”“Together we must set out to correct the defects of the past.” Nelson Mandela
Today, 20 February, is World Day of Social Justice. Something worth pausing to reflect on. The fight for social justice, for equal rights and respect, is one that has been fought for a long time now and that will continue for what looks like some time to come. The fight for social justice is fought on many different fronts, because there is still social injustice in many, many guises. As usual, in this blog, I will highlight the way this particularly relates to vulnerable children around the world.
Continue reading “World Day of Social Justice”Often children who cannot stay with their parents need an alternative for a limited time. It might be days, weeks, months or sometimes even a few years. However, after that time they may be able to go back to their own parents. That, of course, is the ideal for any child.
Unfortunately, in some cases it is clear from pretty early on, that the child will never be able to return to the care of her parents or extended family. In these cases, it is possible to organise long-term foster care for the child, something that happens in many places. However, foster care usually does not give the same feeling of permanence and security as the other option: adoption.
Continue reading “Forever Families: Adoption”It is very rare, only a very small percentage of children without parental care, but it does sometimes happen that it is not possible to find a place for a child with their extended family, nor in a foster family and the situation is not such that an adoptive family would be appropriate. Usually these children are older, often teenagers, and have complicated challenging behaviour that is difficult to deal with in a family. Or they are children with complex, severe multiple special needs.
What to do with these children? Should they go into an institution? I presume that by now you can predict that the answer here is ‘no’. In this blog we will look at what then.
Continue reading “Next Best: Imitation Families”Despite the impression created by the huge numbers of children in institutions and other types of formal alternative care around the world, by far the majority of children not cared for by their parents, are not in formal alternative care. Most of them are already taken in by their extended families, right at this moment, without any additional awareness raising or support. This is something worth building on.
However, just like there are some children who will not be able to be cared for by their parents, no matter how much support they receive and how great the community services available are, there will also be children who do not have extended family members able to take them in and care for them. For them other family-based solutions need to be found.
Continue reading “If Not Extended Family, Then Foster Family”Prevention of children getting separated from their parents – as discussed in the previous few blogs – drastically reduces the number of children who need alternative care solutions. However, the number of children in need of alternative care will never be zero.
So if they should not go into an institution, where should they go? That is what this blog will look at.
Continue reading “Family-Based Solutions Starts with Extended Family”As the trauma of the expensive December-month is starting to fade, this might be a good time to have a look at what causes you would like to donate to this year. People who really want to help vulnerable children, may feel thrown off kilter after hearing that donating to so-called orphanages actually does a lot of harm, despite the best intentions. This is very understandable. I really hope that this will not shake their determination to make a difference and donate to causes that would be of great help.
So in this blog I want to give an overview of the kind of things that ARE beneficial to vulnerable children and that can use backing and financial support.
Continue reading “So How DOES One Help?”