Introduction
The government of Rwanda is committed to ensuring that all children grow up safe and protected in families. In collaboration with UNICEF and partners, they have established the Tubarerere Mu Murayango (TMM - Let’s Raise Children in Families) programme to enable children and young adults to live in families and communities rather than in residential facilities. This programme was developed to operationalize the government’s Child Care Reform Strategy and has seen the number of children in institutional care drop from 3,323 in 2011 to 178 in 2018. Foster care has also been expanded over this period, and over 3,000 vulnerable families have been supported to prevent unnecessary separation. The success of childcare reform efforts can be attributed to the systematic approach taken by the government. This lays solid foundations for reform through changing social norms, legislation, service provision, and the development of a professional and volunteer social service workforce. This programme brief describes the establishment and development of the social service workforce, and draws out lessons learnt from this process. It is based on a review of relevant policy and programme documents plus interviews and focus group discussions with 65 stakeholders.
This brief is part of a package of materials documenting successes and lessons learnt from implementation of the TMM child care reform programme between 2012 and 2018.
