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.

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Guizhen Li,

This article explores China’s Child Directors System, a nationwide initiative that appoints trained community members to safeguard vulnerable children and connect them with essential services. It highlights the system’s strengths—such as early intervention, broad coverage, and multi-sector collaboration—while noting its potential as a model for other countries.

UNICEF and Changing the Way We Care,

This video explores efforts to enable children with disabilities in Rwanda to grow up in safe and caring families using an integrated approach which saw collaboration between the child protection, health, education and social protection sectors.

UNICEF and Changing the Way We Care,

Over the past decade, Rwanda has reformed its care system to prioritize family-based care, with recent efforts focusing on supporting children with disabilities through a multi-sector, community-based approach. This short case study explains why this integrated model is important to prevent family separation, outlines the key components of this approach, and provides some lessons learnt from the pilot.

Souad Ezzerouali, Mashaallah Alzwae, Muwaffiq Jufri, Abdelrazek Wahba Sayed,

This study analyzes how Omani law protects vulnerable children without family care through foster arrangements, comparing it with practices in Morocco, the UAE, and the principles of Islamic Sharia law. While Oman’s legal framework provides a foundation for care, the research highlights weaknesses in implementation and oversight, recommending stronger monitoring, greater community involvement, and closer alignment with both regional best practices and Sharia objectives.

Lufuno Makhado, Ntsieni Stella Mashau,

This qualitative exploratory-descriptive study outlines alternative approaches to psychosocial support for Orphans and Vulnerable Children in four municipalities of Vhembe district in Limpopo Province, South Africa, in the form of community-based interventions.

Changing the Way We Care,

This handbook is a summarized, user-friendly version of the operating procedures for alternative family- and community-based care options. It provides an overview of each type of care, key considerations, and the process followed for placement. The handbook aims to provide an easy and quick reference to critical information and “how to” about alternative family- and community-based care placements.

Changing the Way We Care,

These illustrations from Changing the Way We Care and the Government of Kenya showcase live community engagement sessions on how to develop Kafaalah messages and promote Kafaalah for family-based care.

Changing the Way We Care, Republic of Kenya,

The Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the Alternative Family-based and Community-based Care of Children in Kenya provide guidance for the comprehensive implementation of the Guidelines for Alternative Family Care for Children in Kenya (2014).

Family for Every Child,

Family for Every Child's new Participatory Evaluation Toolkit places the knowledge and experience of local Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) at its centre. It offers an alternative to traditional evaluation dynamics, by drawing on the strength of local solutions. 

Child Identity Protection (CHIP),

This research brought together the testimonies of adoption professionals (national and international) concerned with the situation of abandoned and placed children in five South American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Peru. The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of the new realities of adoption, in a context where these countries have chosen to limit or stop their foreign adoption practices.