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The aim of this report from SOS Children's Villages is to increase the knowledge and understanding of the needs and rights of young people ageing out of alternative care around the world, in order to inform strategies, policies and services to improve their life chances and outcomes through appropriate preparation for leaving care as well as after-care support. The specific objectives of the research were to highlight facts and figures (or in some cases, lack thereof) on the experiences and challenges of young people leaving care, including through their own voice and the testimony of experts…
This report examines what family means to children and adults in the following countries: Brazil, India, Guyana, South Africa, Egypt, Mexico, Russia, Kenya. The storytellers use evidence from 59 short films made using digital storytelling technique.
Through this technique, it was found that there are a range of family types, all with equal value in children’s lives. Many who made the films spent significant parts of their childhood living with extended family. Many spoke on the pain of separation.
The report notes that policies should not support one family type from another…
This Masters thesis paper, by Michael Maher King of the University of Oxford, reviews the situations of children in institutional alternative care in Israel and Japan. According to the paper, Japan and Israel are significant outliers in the global trend towards deinstitutionalisation of alternative care for children. Ninety per cent of children entering care in Japan, and eighty per cent of children entering care in Israel are placed into institutions, some of which can house over two hundred children. This qualitative research explores whether there are any shared mechanisms behind the…
This paper describes a study that assessed the attitudes of people in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan toward the implementation of foster care as an alternative to institutions for children. According to the paper, many middle and low-income countries continue to utilize large institutional settings as the predominant model of alternative care for children, despite growing evidence that these settings are detrimental to children's development. Middle Eastern children and youth who have been institutionalized often experience a high degree of stigma upon returning to…
The Maygoma Institution for Babies (Maygoma) in Khartoum State, Sudan, was established in 1961. It was designed to take care of a maximum of 80 babies and generally had a population of about 40 at any one time. At the time that the institution was established, there were close relationships between the Sudanese Government and the communist governments of Eastern Europe and this resulted in a considerable influence of Eastern European social work practices upon those in Sudan.
A study carried out in 2003 estimated that 1600 babies, mostly newborn, were being left on the streets of…
Based on research undertaken in 2003, evidence indicated that an average of 110 new born babies were being abandoned in Khartoum every month. Half were estimated to die before receiving any assistance while those who survived abandonment were admitted to a state orphanage.
Social stigma attached to children born out of wedlock: while Islam positively values the care of orphaned and abandoned children by others, the legal recognition of the relationship between the orphaned child and their caregivers is based on the system of Kafala — the Islamic duty to save any…
As the HIV/AIDS epidemic strikes at the heart of family and community support structures, large numbers of older people are assuming responsibility for bringing up orphans and vulnerable children. Family structures are changing. Often the middle generation – both men and women – is completely absent, leaving the old and young to support each other.
This means that families of older carers and orphans and vulnerable children are compelled to take on new roles. Older people make up a significant proportion of the poorest, and HIV/AIDS exacerbates the extreme poverty faced by older-…
Libyan municipalities have now begun banning militias from using children under the age of 18.
1 in 10 children worldwide lives in the care of family members or friends who are not their birth parents. Yet in many countries, kinship care receives no official acknowledgement, leaving caregivers without vital support and potentially putting children at risk.
Join this online event to learn what kinship care looks like in different contexts and why recognising it is so important. Participants will hear from frontline practitioners in Egypt, Ethiopia and Paraguay about the different ways that kinship care is used to reintegrate children from institutional care and life on the…