Community Based Care Mechanisms

The Guidelines for the Alternative Care for Children highlight the importance of providing children with care within family-type settings in their own communities. This allows girls and boys to maintain ties with natural support networks such as relatives, friends and neighbours, and minimizes disruption to their education, cultural and social life. Keeping children within their communities (ideally as close as possible to their original homes), also allows girls and boys to stay in touch with their families, and facilitates potential reintegration.

Examples from around the world demonstrate that there are many ways children without adequate family care can be supported within their own communities. This includes both formal and informal arrangements such as foster care, kinship care, domestic adoption/Kafala, guardianship, supervised independent living, child-headed households and small group homes.

These practices can be supported through a range of formal measures including social protection schemes (e.g. child sensitive cash transfers), family strengthening services, community based rehabilitation services for children with disabilities, respite care, training for caregivers, and policies that support families in alternative care-taking roles. Increasing access to free education and health services, and establishing social assistance programmes to reduce poverty, can also help the poorest caregivers to support children within the community.

In the absence of well-developed care and child protection systems in many countries, community based mechanisms can also play a key role supporting children and caretakers in alternative care situations. Child protection Committees, faith based organizations, civil society groups, volunteer associations and other community based groups can provide financial or practical support through schemes that help to fund children’s education or health costs, link them to support services or social assistance schemes, and provide mentorship and family counseling. Home visits and caretaker support groups can also play a valuable role, while awareness raising efforts to promote children’s rights (particularly if supported by community and religious leaders), can help to reduce discrimination against girls and boys in alternative care arrangements – particularly those with disabilities or from minority groups.

As long as they are not over-burdened or given responsibilities beyond their competence, community-based groups can provide vital support to children in alternative care situations. Often however, they are hampered by weak organizational procedures, limited technical capacity and poor coordination. Continued efforts by governments, NGOs and international agencies are needed to promote their institutional development and to enhance their ability to support children.

The literature in this section describes a range of care arrangements that enable children to receive adequate care within their own communities, and community support initiatives that help to sustain them.

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Assessment of Community-and Family-Based Alternative Child-Care Services in Ethiopia

Getnet Tadele, Desta Ayode, Woldekidan Kifle, 28 Dec 2013

This assessment conducted by FHI 360, with support from Ethiopia's Ministry of Women, Youth and Children Affairs (MoWYCA) and the OAK Foundation aimed to generate evidence about formal community and family- based alternative child care services and service providing agencies in Ethiopia, with a particular focus on magnitude, quality and quality-assurance mechanisms.

Caring for orphaned children in China

Xiaoyuan Shang and Karen R. Fisher, 14 Dec 2013

This book by Dr. Xiaoyuan Shang and Karen Fisher provides a comprehensive and clear picture of the situation of children who are orphaned or abandoned in China. It introduces the context and framework for the alternative care system and China’s welfare system as it applies to children, and provides a profile of orphans and of care arrangements, describing both the formal child welfare system and the informal care system, particularly kinship care.

Evaluation of the Implementation of the National Strategy and Action Plan for the Reform of the Residential Childcare System in Moldova 2007-2012

Peter Evans, 04 Dec 2013

The Government of the Republic of Moldova launched its childcare reforms in 2006 aiming to establish a network of community social assistants, develop family support services and alternative family placement services, and reorganise residential childcare institutions. This evaluation reviews the implementation of the National Strategy and Action Plan for the Reform of the Residential Childcare System 2007–2012 approved by the Government of the Republic of Moldova in July 2007.

Final Project Evaluation: Developing Community based Services for Children with Disabilities and their Families

Camelia Gheorghe and Ozren Runic, 01 Dec 2013

The main purpose of this final, summative evaluation is to evaluate the final results and achievements of the "Developing community based services for children with disabilities and their families’’ project in relation to the project log frame and theory of change.

Foster Family: A Study on the Practice of Foster Care for Children In India

Bosco National Research And Documentation Center, 01 Dec 2013

This important study on foster care practices in India provides important insight into the history, approaches, challenges and opportunities facing the development of foster care services in the country, presenting a picture of foster care practices across nine Indian states.

‘Everybody’s Child’ but ‘Nobody’s Child’: Strengthening Alternative Family and Community Based Care Options for Abandoned Children Placed in Ugandan Institutions.

Nakimbugwe Grace Lisa - The Hague, 01 Dec 2013

The study examined alternative family and community care options and how they can be strengthened; cultural attitudes and perceptions of the communities and experiences of prospective foster and adoptive parents as regards reunification, kinship care, fostering and adoption.

Community-Based Child Protection Mechanisms in Refugee Camps in Rwanda: An Ethnographic Study

Imogen Prickett, Israel Moya, Liberata Muhorakeye, Mark Canavera and Dr. Lindsay Stark - CPC Learning Network, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, HealthNet TPO, TPO Uganda, Avsi, U.S. State Department, 01 Dec 2013

The purpose of this research is to learn about community-based child protection processes and mechanisms in two refugee camps in Rwanda – Gihembe and Kiziba.

Understanding and Improving Informal Alternative Care Mechanisms: Kinship care in West Central Africa

Save the Children, 31 Oct 2013

A report by Save the Children examining the role and extent of kinship care in West Central Africa, as well as looking into program and policy implications and gaps in advocacy.

Joint Memorandum: Community Living for All - The Need to Provide Clarity in Thematic Conditionality 10

NUI Galway, Lumos, European Foundation Centre, The Equal Rights Trust, AGE Platform Europe, European Disability Forum , 12 Oct 2013

This joint memo was issued by a group of European organizations to clearly state their belief that the draft language on community living in the proposed EU Structural Funds Regulations should be amended to enhance the effect and to better advance the rights of children, persons with disabilities, and older people.

Ending the Placement of Children Under Three in Institutions: Report from the International Ministerial Conference, Sofia, November 2012

UNICEF , 01 Oct 2013

This Report from the international ministerial conference, held in Sofia, 21–22 November 2012, entitled 'Ending the placement of children under three in institutions: support nurturing families for all young children', brings together the presentations, political commitments and priority actions identified by the participants, including 20 governments from Eastern Europe and Central Asia.