Every child has the right to grow up in a nurturing family environment. Yet nearly 60,000 children aged 0-17 years across five countries in Central Asia are growing up in residential care, despite the well-known and devastating impact of family separation and child institutionalization. This figure may well be the ‘tip of the iceberg’, given current limitations in data availability, consistency and coverage.
UNICEF’s position is clear: no child should ever be placed in alternative care because of poverty, disability or challenging behaviour, or because their family lacks access to services they need to care for their own child at home. On the rare occasions when alternative care is in the child’s best interests, it should always be family-based – never institutional.
Keeping families together will help to end the region’s long history of institutionalizing children, and support the creation of social services that meet the needs of all vulnerable children and their families.
