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.

Examples from around the world demonstrate that there are many ways children without adequate family care can be supported within their own communities. This includes both formal and informal arrangements such as foster care, kinship care, domestic adoption/Kafala, guardianship, supervised independent living, child-headed households and small group homes.

These practices can be supported through a range of formal measures including social protection schemes (e.g. child sensitive cash transfers), family strengthening services, community based rehabilitation services for children with disabilities, respite care, training for caregivers, and policies that support families in alternative care-taking roles. Increasing access to free education and health services, and establishing social assistance programmes to reduce poverty, can also help the poorest caregivers to support children within the community.

In the absence of well-developed care and child protection systems in many countries, community based mechanisms can also play a key role supporting children and caretakers in alternative care situations. Child protection Committees, faith based organizations, civil society groups, volunteer associations and other community based groups can provide financial or practical support through schemes that help to fund children’s education or health costs, link them to support services or social assistance schemes, and provide mentorship and family counseling. Home visits and caretaker support groups can also play a valuable role, while awareness raising efforts to promote children’s rights (particularly if supported by community and religious leaders), can help to reduce discrimination against girls and boys in alternative care arrangements – particularly those with disabilities or from minority groups.

As long as they are not over-burdened or given responsibilities beyond their competence, community-based groups can provide vital support to children in alternative care situations. Often however, they are hampered by weak organizational procedures, limited technical capacity and poor coordination. Continued efforts by governments, NGOs and international agencies are needed to promote their institutional development and to enhance their ability to support children.

The literature in this section describes a range of care arrangements that enable children to receive adequate care within their own communities, and community support initiatives that help to sustain them.

Displaying 121 - 130 of 310

Browse Other Topics

Renforcer les communautés pour soutenir les familles

SOS Villages d'Enfants , 01 May 2014

Comment les réseaux sociaux solides soutiennent les enfants d’Afrique subsaharienne et leurs familles. Les enfants et les familles vulnérables ont besoin d’un système de soutien social qui réponde aux problèmes qu’ils rencontrent grâce à des solutions efficaces et durables. Les observations présentées dans ce rapport sont un « cliché instantané » des pratiques prometteuses en matière de développement et de pérennité de la communauté.

Deinstitutionalization in Croatia: A Summary of Open Society Support

Open Society Foundations, 01 May 2014

This paper examines the work Open Society Foundations have done in Croatia as part of its Mental Health Initiative (MHI), with the goal of helping people with disabilities return to their communities where they are support

Christianity’s Commitments to Nurturing and Protecting Children: Biblical Foundations

Mary J. Bunge - Child Abuse and Neglect Journal, Volume 38, Issue 4, 30 Apr 2014

This article provides examples from the Christian Bible to suggest that Christianity offers many principles and mandates that promote Christians to protect and nurture children.

View Article

The Positive Role of Religion and Religious Communities in Child Protection

Mary J. Bunge - Child Abuse and Neglect Journal, Volume 38, Issue 4, 29 Apr 2014

This article introduces the series of articles in this issue of the Child Abuse and Neglect Journal which focus on the role of religion and religious communities on children’s care and protection.

View Article

A Grounded View of Community-Based Child Protection Mechanisms and their Linkages with the Wider Child Protection System in Three Rural and Urban Areas in Kenya

Wessells, M., Kostelny, K., and Ondoro, K., 17 Apr 2014

The research which is the focus of this report involves systematic learning about existing CBCPMs and their linkage with formal, government led aspects of the wider child protection system.

Engaging Religious Communities to Protect Children From Abuse, Neglect, and Exploitation

Malia Robinson & Stephen Hanmer - Child Abuse and Neglect Journal, Volume 38, Issue 4, 13 Apr 2014

This article is primarily aimed at providing a foundation for analyzing both the challenges and opportunities of partnering with religious communities and organizations in addressing child abuse and neglect.

View Article

Buddhism and Children

Vanessa R. Sasson - Child Abuse and Neglect Journal, Volume 38, Issue 4, 01 Apr 2014

This article explores some of the ways that Buddhism expresses care for its children.

View Article

Residential Care for Abandoned Children and their Integration into a Family-Based Setting in Uganda: Lessons for Policy and Programming

Eddy J. Walakira, Eric A. Ochen, Paul Bukuluki and Sue Alllan, 11 Mar 2014

Infant Mental Health Journal has published an important Special Issue on Global Research, Practice, and Policy Issues in the Care of Infants and Young Children at Risk. This article describes a model of care for abandoned and neglected infants in need of urgent physical, social, and medical support as implemented by the Child's i Foundation, an international, nongovernmental organization operating in Uganda.

View Abstract

Better Care Network Strategic Plan 2014 - 2017

Better Care Network, 28 Feb 2014

In 2013, Better Care Network (BCN) initiated an important process of developing a new Strategic Plan identifying the main strategic focus for its work over the next four years (2014-2017). The plan is based on an analysis of BCN’s achievements to date, the strategic areas in which BCN can have most impact in the future by working with key actors to strengthen the response to children without adequate family care.

From Institutional Care to Family Support: Development of an Effective Early Intervention Network in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, Russian Federation

Dana E. Johnson, Svyatoslav V. Dovbnya, Tatiana U. Morozova, Melinda A. Richards and Julia G. Bogdanova, 22 Jan 2014

Infant Mental Health Journal has published an important Special Issue on Global Research, Practice, and Policy Issues in the Care of Infants and Young Children at Risk. This article documents an initiative to establish a replicable professional model that would direct the child welfare system in the Nizhny Novgorod Region away from institutional care and toward services for young children and their families that reduce the risk of institutionalization.

View Article