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The enactment of the National Standard of Care for Child Welfare Institutions in 2011 signifies Indonesia's commitment to deinstitutionalization by guiding the transformation of the country’s Child Welfare Institutions, from facility-based childcare homes or orphanages, to centers of community-based children and family services. Yet, evidence of this transformation of Child Welfare Institutions is scarce. This study aimed to investigate the state of transformation of the child welfare service providers for neglected children in the City of Bandung as a parameter to understand the progress of…
This phenomenological study explores how five institutionalised Malay adolescents used adaptive strategies towards independent living upon being released from welfare institutions. Five 17-year-old Malay Muslim adolescents, three males and two females, were recruited via purposive sampling for a focus group discussion to gather insights into their plans and strategies to cope with life challenges after being released from their respective welfare institutions.
Thematic analysis of the FGD data extracted six themes that portrayed the adolescents’ adaptive strategies for facing challenges in…
This report represents a summary of presentations and discussions of the 5th Biennial International Conference on Alternative Care for Children in Asia held throughout the two days in Kathmandu, Nepal, in September 2023. BICON is an inter-agency cooperation of eight international organisations focused on alternative care for children.
Over 53 speakers and 300 participants, including over 50 young people with care experience, from across Asia and beyond joined us and shared their perspectives. BICON was also streamed to participants around the world.
As well as a summary…
The Social Welfare Workforce Strengthening Conference: Investing in Those Who Care for Children, held in Cape Town, South Africa in 2010, is often recognized as the launch of a global movement to strengthen the social service workforce and to develop stronger, more effective social service systems. The conference, supported by the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), brought together 18 country teams drawn from government, non-governmental organizations, professional associations and higher education institutions to share experiences of the challenges facing the…
Families First Project is a program initiated by Save the Children in Indonesia in collaboration with the Indonesian Government to promote a safe family environment for raising and caring for children, either in their own families or in family and community-based care alternatives.
In the past 15 years, the Families First Project has made great achievements in shifting the childcare paradigm from institution-based to family-based and enabling hundreds of thousands of children to go back home and stay with family whilst also having access to education. Statistically, in 2007, there were…
The purpose of this study is to explore how growing up in private residential care in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai provinces of Thailand has affected children’s well-being over time. The research provided an important opportunity for young people to describe and analyze their experience, as well as make their own conclusions and recommendations. Understanding the life paths of these young people after leaving care offers important insights for developing strategies, policies and services to improve outcomes for other children facing similar experiences. The study was commissioned as part of the…
In this editorial, Ian Forber-Pratt, editor of this tenth anniversary edition of the Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond, gives an of alternative care in Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bhutan.
Introduction:
Over the past decade, the South Asian region has witnessed remarkable efforts in reforming child protection systems from institutions as the first resort to providing a wide range of family-based.
This tenth anniversary edition of the journal gives a real, raw, and…
Abstract:
This paper presents findings from a qualitative study that explored children's and families' experiences of alternative care in Thailand. The study used arts-based methods to engage 160 children living in a range of care settings.
This included government and NGO-run residential care settings (RCS), children's villages, Buddhist temples, migrant learning centres and foster care homes. Interviews were also conducted with 20 parents/guardians who had placed their children in care. Findings show that despite the alternative care system presenting significant challenges,…
Abstracts:
This qualitative research aimed to develop the alternative care action plan for Thailand. The method used in this study included the analysis of documents related to the alternative care situations in Thailand and the interviews where the key informants were specifically selected so that the collected data could be used to develop the alternative care action plan. The study found that Thailand had seven areas of strengths and challenges related to the alternative care i.e. laws and policies related to the gatekeeping and family strengthening, collaborative structured and…
National Plan of Action on Alternative Care for Children Phase 1 (2022 - 2026) has been prepared to provide the direction of alternative care operations in Thailand that reflects the spirit of practices on alternative care for children in 5 areas:
- Family support and strengthening to prevent unnecessary separation,
- Gatekeeping processes and mechanisms to prevent unnecessary separation of children from the family,
- Ensuring quality of various childcare services
- Deinstitutionalization to reduce dependence on institutions which should be a last resort…