Today I am starting a six-week online course called Caring for Children Moving Alone: Protecting Unaccompanied and Separated Children, organised by Strathclyde University. The reason for taking this course, is that in order to help vulnerable children and to find suitable family-based solutions, it is essential to be aware of the needs of the children. Children from different backgrounds, in different situations, have different needs that need to be met to make sure that they are safe and that they are able to develop well and thrive.
Continue reading “Exchanging Knowledge, Questions and Experiences”Tag: #vulnerablechildren
Podcast Outcomes of Institutional Care
When you read statistics about what happens when children who spent their childhood and/or youth in an institution grow up and have to face life on their own, it seems quite abstract. So in today’s podcast I want to share with you something about the lives of two adults who grew up in an institutions, to give an insight into the consequences.
The next podcast will be posted in five weeks.
Please share this to help spread awareness.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:59 — 18.9MB)
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Filling the Gap with Emergency Foster Care
More and more people agree that institutional care is not good for children. However, there is still a belief that in some situations putting children in institutions is inevitable. A belief that while it is not good, it is still better than the alternative. This belief exists, because there is a lack of awareness of alternative options. The thought is that the only options are leaving the child in a dangerous situation or putting her in an institution.
The good news is that this is not true. There is a family-based alternative, also in emergency situations. In this blog we will look at what that is.
Continue reading “Filling the Gap with Emergency Foster Care”DI: Resources
When the idea of deinstitutionalisation is first mentioned at an institution, there is usually a lot of push-back. Among the first arguments to be brought up are usually: ‘but we have all these buildings here’, and ‘what about our staff, they will all be out of work’. These are understandable concerns, but – as we shall see in this blog – not things that need to be obstacles.
Continue reading “DI: Resources”Forever Families: Adoption
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”Next Best: Imitation Families
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”If Not Extended Family, Then Foster Family
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”Family-Based Solutions Starts with Extended 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”What About Children with Disabilities?
A five-year-old girl, weighing 6kg, who has lived in an institution since she was a few months old, because she has spastic cerebral palsy. At five years old she is the size of a very skinny 18-month-old and she has reached the milestones of a four-month-old baby. On first meeting her, it is easy to presume that she is very severely impaired, both physically and intellectually. However, appearances are deceiving.
Continue reading “What About Children with Disabilities?”Combating Poverty, the Cheaper Option
As mentioned in the blog at the start of the month (HERE) poverty is very high on the list of reasons why children end up being separated from their parents, and in many cases institutionalised. This is something that can be tackled relatively simply.
When I talk about poverty relief, I am not talking about pie-in-the-sky wishes like an end to hunger globally (and let’s throw in world peace for good measure). Of course I would like to see that, but let’s go one step at a time. In this blog I want to mention a series of practical measures that are already being implemented in many places, including in some low-income countries. Measures that have been shown to be very effective, as well as very cost-effective.
Continue reading “Combating Poverty, the Cheaper Option”