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This webinar introduced new global inter-agency guidance on kinship care. This guidance was developed in collaboration with a range of agencies including both UNICEF and Changing the Way We Care. During the webinar, panelists shared key lessons learnt on how to support kinship care, drawing particularly on examples of promising practices from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Liberia, and Brazil.
Government representatives from both Zimbabwe and Liberia were in attendance to share their work on kinship care.
This paper argues that kinship care – the care of children by relatives or friends of the family – represents the greatest resource available for meeting the needs of girls and boys who are orphaned or otherwise live apart from their parents. Using evidence from an in-depth literature review and six country case studies carried out by Family for Every Child members in Ghana, Liberia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Zimbabwe,1 it shows that kinship care is widely used, culturally acceptable, and can support the most vulnerable children in ordinary and crisis periods. However, kinship care also…
Executive summary
Children living in Liberia’s orphanages are denied basic rights – ranging from the right to development and health, to the right to identity, family, education, leisure and participation in cultural activities. The concurrent denial of this range of rights – economic, social, cultural, civil, and political - has an incremental and lasting effect on the children.
The UNMIL Human Rights and Protection Section (HRPS) considers the situation in orphanages to constitute a major human rights problem in post-conflict Liberia. It has therefore produced this report, following a…
This brief is part of a series of country briefs which aim to provide an analysis of children’s living and care arrangements according to the latest available data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) or Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys (MICS) at the time of publication.
This country brief provides an overview of data on children’s living arrangements in Liberia, extracted from the 2013 DHS survey. The brief presents data on who…
This draft from the Liberian government outlines the protocol and guidelines for responding to children's care issues in the context of Ebola, specifically for the Interim Care Centers for children who have come into contact with Ebola. The draft provides an introduction to the impact of the Ebola epidemic on children’s care in Liberia, stating that UNICEF estimates approximately 2,000 children in Liberia have lost one or both caregivers to the epidemic. Furthermore, there are thousands of other children who are separated from their families because their parents are in treatment or children…
This capacity building plan supports the implementation of the Liberian Guidelines for Kinship Care, Foster Care and Supported Independent Living. It establishes clear steps towards the strengthening of social welfare services for vulnerable populations in Liberia. This plan builds upon the on-going effort by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Department of Social Welfare to strengthen its capacity in terms of improving performance and providing quality social welfare services to people in need of care and support, including vulnerable children particularly children…
This “roadmap” document outlines the recommended implementation strategies and activities for strengthening family- and community-based alternative care in Liberia. It accompanies the Guidelines on Kinship Care, Foster Care and Supported Independent Living (the Guidelines) and the Capacity Building Plan to Implement the Guidelines (CBP). The roadmap serves as a resource tool for the Government of Liberia, and its partners, for the protection of children without appropriate care through the development of alternative care, deinstitutionalization and other support services.…
In recent years, the Government of Liberia has made significant advances in strengthening the child protection system, in particular with alternative care. The Guidelines for Kinship Care, Foster Care and Supported Independent Living in Liberia paper has been produced as part of the efforts made to continue this advancement. The Guidelines are intended to provide harmonized national guidance for child welfare practitioners in order to improve the quality of family-based alternative care services in Liberia, particularly for children without appropriate care (CWAC). The Guidelines aim at…
These Regulations and Tools are designed to create the basis for reforming welfare institutions, thereby protecting children and providing opportunities for those living in alternative care. They were adopted in 2010 and provide the basis through which the Government of Liberia, through the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MoHSW) will regulate all child welfare institutions, including orphanages and alternative care arrangements such as foster care and kinship.
This report presents the findings of an assessment conducted between 8 July and 22 August 2006 that gathered and analyzed information on inter-country adoption to support strengthening Liberia’s adoption laws and develop operating guidelines for adoption agencies. The assessment is part of Liberia’s obligation as a signatory to the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child and was collaboration between the Liberian Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, UNICEF, and Holt International Children’s Services.
The study found that Liberia’s adoption law fails to address the…