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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Community-based initiatives in response to the OVC crisis in North Central Uganda

Titeca, Kristof & Omwa, Samuel Samson - Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB), 01 Apr 2011

This paper shows how OVC community responses in Northern Uganda are under severe pressure from a range of factors; but how these community initiatives are not collapsing – as the ‘social rupture’ thesis predicts.

World Report on Disability 2011

World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Bank, 2011

The first ever World report on disability, produced jointly by WHO and the World Bank, suggests that more than a billion people in the world today experience disability. This report provides the best available evidence about what works to overcome barriers to health care, rehabilitation, education, employment, and support services, and to create the environments which will enable people with disabilities to flourish. The report ends with a concrete set of recommended actions for governments and their partners.

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Strengthening Families and Communities: 2011 Resource Guide

Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2011

Resource guide developed to support service providers in their work with parents, caregivers, and children to prevent child abuse and neglect

Children without Appropriate Care: Participant Manual for Asia and the Pacific

Louise Melville Fulford, 31 Dec 2010

This manual offers a training session targeted at policy makers, professionals and paraprofessionals who are already working on programs to support children without appropriate care, or who may begin work in this area. This workshop focuses on children in developing contexts, who require support within their families and those who need an alternative care placement.

A Study of the Foster Care Programme in Jamaica

Office of the Children's Advocate , 20 Dec 2010

Findings of a study aimed to determine the effectiveness and the efficiency of the Foster Care Programme, assess the treatment of children in Foster Care, assess the adherence to child rights in the provision of Foster Care, provide policy direction for the enhancement of the Programme.

Positively Caring: Ensuring that Positive Choices Can Be Made about the Care of Children Affected by HIV

EveryChild , 20 Nov 2010

This report examines the impacts of HIV on the care choices of children, exploring how HIV affects whether or not children can remain within parental care, and on the alternative care options open to them.

Improving Care Options for Children in Ethiopia through Understanding Institutional Child Care and Factors Driving Institutionalization

Family Health International , 01 Jun 2010

Findings and recommendations of the first national study of its kind in Ethiopia to study child care institutions, institutionalized children, and factors driving institutionalization.

Faith Based Orphan Care: Addressing Child-Oriented Goals and Child Rights in HIV/AIDS- Affected Communities

Madeleine A. Currie and S. Jody Heymann - Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1,, 01 Mar 2010

This article explores how established faith-based organizations that work with children affected by HIV/AIDS address the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Millennium Development Goals in their service practices and what challenges they face.

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The Way We Care: A Guide for Managers of Programs Serving Vulnerable Children and Youth

Family Health International, 19 Feb 2010

Manual aims to develop awareness, reinforce knowledge, and assist those designing, implementing, or managing programs for children and youth affected by poverty, HIV and AIDS, and other diseases.

De-Institutionalizing and Transforming Children's Services: A Guide to Good Practice

European Commission Daphne Programme, WHO Regional Office, University of Birmingham, 01 Feb 2010

Comprehensive manual on the theory and process of deinstitutionalization based on the experiences of childcare professionals across the European region.