The Trainers Package is primarily for Government of Rwanda Child Protection and Welfare Officers, representatives of the NCPD and others who work directly with children and families on reintegration of children, including children with disabilities, from residential institutions to family care. It can also provide useful information to people working in other local government roles, for example District Disability Mainstreaming Officers and Gender & Family Promotion Officers, as well as people working in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or community based systems (for example, Inshuti z’Umuryango - Friends of the Family) who support children and families, and particularly those who have contact with children during the reintegration process.
In March 2012, the Government of Rwanda endorsed the Strategy for National Child Care Reform. The implementation mechanism for this strategy is the Tubarerere Mu Muryango (TMM) programme (‘Let’s raise children in families’) led by the National Child Development Agency (NCD). The TMM programme aims to ensure that children living in institutional care in Rwanda are reunited with their families or placed in suitable forms of family-based alternative care and that children in families are prevented from separating. The programme uses the childcare reform as a springboard for wider strengthening of the child protection system. The TMM first phase did not have a specific focus on residential institutions for children with disabilities but did include reintegration of a small number of children with disabilities who were residing in the target institutions. The 2018 evaluation of the TMM first phase reported that placement of children with disabilities into families utilizing the existing model was challenging. Therefore a second phase of TMM was initiated by NCD in partnership with the NCPD during 2019. This included the adjustment of the Training Package for the TMM programme to make it more inclusive through the addition of a third module on inclusive case management for reintegration.
Inclusive design is considered more appropriate than development of a stand-alone and parallel system which can contribute to further stigmatization and discrimination. The Operational Guidance on Inclusive Children’s Reintegration served as the guiding framework for the development of Module Three of the Training Package.
Given that all children, including children with disabilities may require different services across multiple sectors at different times in their lives, the Operational Guidance is underpinned by the functioning case management system and existing mechanisms for coordination and collaboration. Module Three helps the social service workforce to better understand the reintegration process for all children, including children with disabilities who may require more support than children without disabilities.