The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) declares that, ‘the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment’. Many parties to the Convention are reforming their child welfare system so that children in difficulty have a better chance of staying in a family. For many former Soviet republics this represents a major shift in approach. A Model for Assessing Social Care Services for Children: Lessons from Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan documents model for assessing the status of child care reform and applies it to two countries, the Kyrgyz Republic and Tajikistan (both parties to the CRC). The model has two primary components: classification of child care services and the classic policy cycle (problem identification, policy development, policy implementation and monitoring and review). The study combines the two model components in order to analyze the different stages of evolution of the services and identify blockages in delivering alternatives to residential care.
