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In this video, Tamara Mwale of Alliance for Children Everywhere (ACE) Zambia shares a story of reintegration. At ACE, whenever possible, the team seeks to reintegrate children with biological family. They create a customized plan to ensure a safe and healthy reintegration process with systemic support to prevent future disruption.
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Kinship care involves children who cannot be cared for by parents being looked after by relatives or friends of the family. In Zimbabwe, around a quarter of all children are estimated to be in kinship care. Regional and global guidance state that kinship care should always be explored as the first option when children are separated from parents. It can offer a safe and caring environment, where children speak their own languages and follow their own traditions. However, without support, kinship care families often face challenges, especially as most kinship carers are elderly grandmothers…
This regional portrait describes Catholic-sponsored care for children in Eastern Africa using data from Kenya, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia. The first large study of its kind, it focuses on children who are particularly vulnerable—those at risk of or those who have been separated from their families. Many are in institutional care.
This portrait also describes growing efforts, led by women and men religious, to ensure children can grow up in safe, nurturing families or family-like environments rather than institutions. Through national associations of religious, Catholic Care for Children…
Abstract
Summary
Many young orphans in Zimbabwe grow up in residential care facilities, but according to governmental policies and literature in this field, these children should be transitioned to extended families to ensure optimal development. Thus, semi-structured interviews was conducted with a social worker, two residential care administrators and five extended families; whereas the participating orphans were asked to draw and narrate their lives in RCC and their extended families. This article provides empirically derived insights to the inner experiences of the…
Orphans are at higher risk of HIV infection and several important HIV risk factors than non-orphans; however, this may be due to a combination of related social, psychological, and economic factors, as well as care environment, rather than orphan status alone. Understanding these complex relationships may aid policy makers in supporting evidence-based, cost-effective programming for this vulnerable population.
This longitudinal study uses a causal effect model to examine, through decomposition, the relationship between care environment and HIV risk factors in orphaned and separated…
CTWWC was conceived as a design-build initiative, firmly set within a collaborate, learn, adapt (CLA) framework. The initiative understands that care reform is a long and complex process, requiring collaboration between many diverse actors, and that change pathways would likely differ between contexts. CTWWC is anchored in a belief that by capturing the process of change and learning from different countries, the global knowledge base around care reform globally would be built, and therefore be able to inform and reinforce the global momentum for family care. CLA is at the heart of CTWWC’s…
A step-by-step process and approach that enables practitioners (sometimes called “case workers,” “case managers” or “social workers”) to work with families who need support. It includes tools and processes for work with children and families, recognizing all of their strengths and risks. Case management is used with both families at risk of separation and those where children have already separated and are in the process of being reintegrated, including biological family or placed into an alternative family (e.g., foster or kinship). The end goal of case management is that…
The institutionalisation of children has been seen to increase the risk for emotional, developmental, cognitive and attachment disorders later in life. Transitioning out of institutionalised care and integrating into the outside world has been found to be a difficult experience for many care leavers. Some of them are not prepared to face the outside world, feel neglected and lack a support system. Some may experience socio-emotional distress owing to a lack of necessary social skills in life outside the institutions.
The study purposed to assess the psychological wellbeing of adults who…
This mixed-methods study collects survey data from 253 adults involved with vulnerable children in Tanzania and narrative data from 31 young adults who experienced residential care during their childhood. The research fills a gap in the literature about the lived experiences of children in institutional care and the impacts of this type of care on their lives.
The findings reveal a societal consensus on the primary role of the family in child-rearing, and acknowledges the potential harms of residential care. Survey data indicates that 59% of respondents consider preventing family…
This case story is meant to illustrate the transition process of Good Life orphanage, a charitable children’s institution based in Kilifi County, Kenya, the actors involved, the challenges and the success factors; recognizing that each transition is an individual process with different starting points, different dynamics and different evolutions.
This case story complements the Transitioning Models of Care Assessment Tool by illustrating one or more stages of change.