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The Child Rescue Centre (CRC) in Sierra Leone began as a faith-based residential children’s home established in 2000 with 40 children rescued from the streets during the last two years of a brutal 10-year civil war.
It was founded through a partnership between a United Methodist Church (UMC) congregation in the US and the UMC Sierra Leone Annual Conference. Within a year, the center added a family preservation program designed to provide material and financial support to at-risk families and remove the need for families to send their children to the orphanage. Over the years, the…
People with disabilities have the right to live in the community, according to Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, more than a decade after the adoption of the CRPD by the UN and nearly global ratification, children with disabilities continue to be placed in institutions in every region of the world. Worse still, low-middle income countries that have never had systems of institutionalization have started to build them.
In 2017, the CRPD Committee adopted general comment No. 5 on Article 19 on living independently and being included in the…
There is a growing global consensus that isolated efforts to improve individual institutions will not solve the problems of children in residential care, or meet their best interests. Family-based care alternatives, namely kinship care and foster care, therefore need to be actively promoted and strengthened in Ghana so that children are only ever in residential care as a temporary last resort.
This document is aimed at complementing the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for…
Abstract
Traditionally, the involvement of the extended family in nurturing children is seen as an essential cultural practice in most communities in Ghana. Though not formally regulated, often in the absence of birth parents, kin and kith continue to be involved in the care of children to promote family relations and culture. Yet there is little empirical evidence on how to improve the well‐being and safety of children in informal kinship care in Ghana. Thus, this study reports findings from in‐depth interviews with 15 young people, 18 to 23 years, from Banda—an ethnic group where…
In the 2006 Care Reform Initiative (CRI), Ghana’s Department of Social Welfare (DSW) called for the deinstitutionalization of Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) and sought to move vulnerable children towards a range of integrated family and community-based care services. The initiative is currently on its third five-year road map for 2017 to 2021 with specific targets and yet still children are in orphanages. Over a decade after the official launch of the initiative a myriad of challenges persist, especially the uncertainty over whether families are prepared to welcome OVC into their homes…
Abstract
The need for alternative child care in Nigeria and other developing societies around the world is crucial given the increasing reports and studies on the negative impact of institutional care on child development. Children living in institutions often lack individual care and are cut-off from their communities and cultural identity. Such children also do not experience care in a family environment, hence the need for family-based alternatives. Alternative care such as adoption, community-based care, family strengthening, formal foster care, Islamic Kafalah, kinship fostering, and…
Abstract
The Child Rescue Centre became the first orphanage in Sierra Leone to fully transition from residential to family-based care. The decision to transition was made for many reasons, but the most unique reason is found in the story of Child Rescue Centre Director, Mohamed Nabieu. Nabieu was brought to the orphanage in 2000 and spent the majority of his childhood in the facility before returning as its Director. Following a 2016 directive from the Sierra Leonean government working with UNICEF for all orphanages to develop plans for deinstitutionalization, Nabieu and Dr. Laura…
Both scripture and science affirm: children grow best in healthy families. For vulnerable children and at-risk families, a wide range of family support and care options together contribute to a full “continuum of care” that meets the unique needs of each child and maximizes opportunities for children to grow up in nurturing families. The Christian Alliance for Orphans has offered this challenge grant opportunity to spark innovation as child-serving organizations create or expand effective family care solutions for children. A total of $50,000 was awarded in grants of $5,000 to $10,000 to…
Abstract
The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) stipulates children are entitled to “a family environment…of happiness, love and understanding”. Recent work on deinstitutionalization of children from residential care has found important child wellbeing differences, particularly around hope. Using data from Ghana—a country that has initiated reintegration of children from residential care facilities, therefore providing a natural opportunity for comparative research—we used hope, whether the child has been reunified with family/…
In 2017, MEASURE Evaluation worked with a country core team (CCT) in Ghana, led by the Department of Social Welfare (DSW) of the MOGCSP, to engage government partners and other stakeholders to design, plan, and conduct a participatory self-assessment of the national alternative care system that will support the government and its partners in continuing to advance alternative care.
The assessment framework, finalized with input from USAID headquarters, USAID field offices, and 23 stakeholder interviews in Ghana, covered nine areas of alternative care: (1) prevention of unnecessary…