I have written before, on various occasions about child participation (in this blog you can read what that is exactly, HERE). Like many other things the pandemic crisis has brought this topic to the forefront. Overall, there seemed to be a gradual improvement in governments and decision-makers being more willing to ask children for their insights and perspective and actually taking them into account. Then the crisis hit and all the hatches are down again.
Continue reading “Listening to Children”Tag: #UN
Developing a Model
Over the past 50 years, the awareness of the harm caused by institutionalising children has gradually sunken in and started spreading globally. Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand were the first to start moving away from institutional care and towards family-based alternative care. Since they were at the forefront of this movement, they had on the one hand the challenge of discovering alternatives and figuring out how to implement them properly with little precedence to go on, while on the other hand they had the advantage of being able to do so without outside pressure to get it done quickly. In the past decade or two that pressure has been rising on all countries.
Continue reading “Developing a Model”Agreement on the Need to Get Rid of 'Orphanages'
18 December 2019 was a momentous day for anyone involved in ending institutional care. It was the day that all 193 member states of the UN General Assembly adopted a unique Resolution on the Rights of the Child. This is the first such resolution that addresses the subject of children without parental care, including those in alternative care. And it uses unusually strong language when discussing the risks that this group of children are exposed to.
Continue reading “Agreement on the Need to Get Rid of 'Orphanages'”