This article from New Vision tells the story of Ruth Kahawa, a pastor in the Tororo district of Uganda who set up an orphanage in 1996. Years later, Kahawa was approached by officials from the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development who told her it was best for the children in her care to be raised in families in the community. “The community abused these children, and now the officials are talking of taking them back?” she responded.
Kahawa was finally convinced, however, after attending a workshop on deinstitutionalization. “It’s then that I realized that the children were better off in families, not the orphanage, even if I was providing all they needed,” she said.
Since then, her orphanage has received training from Child's i Foundation on family tracing and reintegration. "This will take us about five years to find the relatives as well as foster families for children whose relatives we fail to trace. We have resettled 21 children so far.”
The article goes on to describe some of the research that reveals institutionalization of children often causes more damage to children and results in worse outcomes for children than family-based care. The article highlights some promising practices around Africa to deinstitutionalize children and build up family-based care.