In 2023, GCF has been able to help 62 children, their parents and caregivers, and social/community workers with:
)
Back to family: emergency foster care
€ 40.000 until 2024
Locatie
South Africa, Ugu-district
Educating parents
In South Africa, unfortunately, many children still live in large-scale institutional care centers. The number of children living in these centers is estimated between 13,000 and 21,000. Despite adequate child protection legislation that acknowledges the importance of family-based care, many children who find themselves in a crisis situation, do end up in institutional care.
Our partner organisation Give a Child a Family (GCF) has a lot of expertise and experience in preventing children from being placed in institutional care and establishing foster care. What is still missing is crisis foster care: foster families that are immediately available to provide acute care for children who cannot live at home. The aim is to direct 62 children in need of care and protection to family-oriented care.
Working with the government
Give a Child a Family works with various child protection agencies and foster families to develop a strong and reliable foster care system.
Simultaneously, GCF is working with the local government in the Ugu District to increase their knowledge about the importance of growing up in a family setting and influence the government to allocate more financial resources to place children in families, rather than in institutional care centers. Family based care is not only cheaper, but also much better for the development of the child.
Goals
Based on the experience and success of the previous project, Wereldkinderen has renewed its cooperation with GCF. Three goals have been set for 2022 and 2023:
- train 24 foster care families in the UGU district and ensure they are ready for the temporary care of children
- develop an efficient referral system that can be used by social workers as an alternative to institutional care
- advocating at a higher institutional level that placement of a child in a family rather than in an institution should be preferred. To this end, best practices and lessons are shared with decision-makers to promote and strengthen alternative care.
Results
