I remember seeing the announcement of the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the news, shortly after my 12th birthday. I am not sure why I remember that, because at that time it did not have much of an impact on me. It was something abstract and far away. And it was wedged in between all of the big stories: Tiananmen Square had happened that summer, the Berlin wall had just come down, the Iron Curtain appeared to be vanishing and the Communist Block was breathing its final breaths. Plus, I had only just turned 12 and I lived in the Netherlands, a country where children did not have all that much to worry about or be afraid of. Yet, still, I remember.
Continue reading “30 Years Convention on the Rights of the Child”Tag: #Childrights
Rethinking Group Homes
For a long time, it was thought that if it was difficult to place a child with a foster family, placing him in a small group home was a suitable alternative. Group homes were seen as imitating families and where therefore expected to have a similar beneficial effect.
Over the past couple of years, experts have come back from this position, because there is too much evidence pointing in the opposite direction.
Continue reading “Rethinking Group Homes”Support Can’t End at Age 18
When alternative care is discussed or arranged – no matter whether it is family-based or institutional – in many cases thoughts only reach as far as the child’s 18th birthday. At that point the child is no longer a child, she has become an adult. And so, the obligation to provide care, whether under the law or under Child Rights, disappears into a puff of smoke.
In far too many cases and countries care provisions and support end on that very day. The child is waved off at the door of the institution, or made to move out of her foster family, and is expected to take care of herself now.
Continue reading “Support Can’t End at Age 18”International Day of Families
Today is the International Day of Families, an important day to celebrate. Families are at the centre of everything Why Family-Based Solutions stands for. It is in families that children are almost always provided with the various conditions they need for proper brain development, proper psychological development, proper growth and proper health, conditions that are missing in institutions. In families this happens as a matter of course, without any conscious thought put into it.
Continue reading “International Day of Families”Working on ‘The World List’
In the summer of 2015, I was starting to get a clearer insight into the diverse backgrounds and problems that were the main cause of the institutionalisation of children in a few specific countries. This insight led me to speculate that actually to be able to really tackle the issue of children institutions – and to get an idea of what is needed to keep them out of them – it would be useful to have information about a few specific subjects for each country, to gain an understanding of what is already in place, what are major obstacles and how alternative care and institutional care are handled.
Continue reading “Working on ‘The World List’”