Displaying 1 - 10 of 2647
The Catholic church has joined the list of stakeholders supporting the plan to phase out Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs) and transition children to a family-based and community care.
The outgoing chairperson of the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops (KCCB) Archbishop Martin Kivuva said the Catholic church embraced the new law under the National Care Reform Strategy in Kenya after overwhelming scientific evidence showed that institutions are not good for children’s growth.
“…
Three years since *Celina decided to apply be a foster parent of *Stella, she recounted the journey she took to integrate her into her family in 2021.
It was a challenging period of adjustment as the then six-year-old struggled to fit into a family set-up after spending several years in a children’s home.
The journey of the 37-year-old foster parent and the child – both whose real names have been withheld to protect their identities – started at Hosanna Children’s Home where the former works as a social worker.
We became friends and she would run to me in the morning when I…
The long-term consequences of COVID-19 have been tough for children around the world, but even more so for young children already in humanitarian crises, whether due to conflict, natural disasters, or economic and political upheaval. Young Children in Humanitarian and COVID-19 Crises: (2024), edited by Sweta Shah and Lucy Bassett, investigates how organizations around the world responded to these dual challenges, identifying solutions and learning opportunities to help to support young children in ongoing and future crises. Drawing on research and voices from the Global South…
This webinar examined care in the context of COVID-19, climate change, and conflict. Speakers explored how the pandemic has left a lasting legacy on the care system in Uganda and examined the impacts of climate change-related drought on children's care in Kenya. They also explored efforts to deliver effective care for children during conflict in Ethiopia.
The purpose of investment cases is to demonstrate how financial allocations will advance specific public policy objectives, such as promoting healthy childhoods and enhancing human capital. In the context of care reform, investment cases aim to outline the resources needed to transition the child care system towards family-based approaches, prevent child-family separation, and reintegrate children from institutional care into familial settings. These cases involve identifying current investments in care, determining additional funding needs, assessing long-term economic impacts, and…
In Kenya, the number of street-involved children continues to grow each decade, with most recent estimates as high as 250 000 to 300 000. Despite efforts by local government, nongovernmental organizations, and community-based organizations to address this problem, most children who receive services end up returning to the streets. Since 2021, Agape Children's Ministry has provided time-limited, crisis-oriented services to families recently reintegrated through its Family Strengthening Programme (FSP).
The authors conducted an exploratory programme evaluation of Agape's FSP to ascertain…
If you’ve watched The Love You Give, you’ll recognise Peter Kamau and his gorgeous son Jedd, who featured in this docustory about orphanages.
Following the death of his parents and separation from his siblings, Peter was raised in an institution in Kenya. The experience had such a profound effect on him that he co-founded Child In Family Focus, an organisation which champions family based care for orphaned and vulnerable children. Even though Kenya now has a moratorium on the registration of new residential care institutions, the country remains one of the most popular destinations…
With rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, increasing biodiversity loss, and prolonged droughts, climate change is already affecting ecosystems in the Eastern and Southern Africa region and the communities that depend on them. For example, recent droughts in the Horn of Africa are widely attributed to climate change, with such extreme weather events likely to become more common as global temperatures rise. Many areas of Kenya have experienced unprecedented drought, with five consecutive below-average rains.
In Kajiado County, Kenya, Maasai communities have seen cattle herds…
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…
Orphanage volunteers may have the best of intentions - but they may unwittingly be doing more harm than good, as one ex-volunteer discovered.
At the age of 17, the idea of volunteering in an orphanage seemed like a rewarding, ethical and helpful thing to do. She found an organisation to travel with and booked on a trip to Kenya.
Looking back, she now questions the ease at which was able to sign up to volunteer in an orphanage, and the unsupervised access, without any child protection checks, to vulnerable children. Today, she feels that her trip was form of exploitation -…