Keeping Children in
Families.
An estimated...
8 million children
around the world are living in residential care institutions.
80%
of these children have living parents.
With little resource being directed to help families stay together, desperate parents often have no choice but to put their children in an orphanage in order to ensure that they receive adequate food, clothing and an education.
Experts all agree that orphanages are not the best place for children and can cause long-term harm.
Children develop best in families,
which makes sense, it's God's design.
God puts the lonely in families - Psalm 68:6
ABOUT KINNECTED:
ACC International are committed to protecting each child’s right to be nurtured and raised in a loving family. To this end, we developed the Kinnected program, which seeks to take a proactive approach to scaling down the use of residential care and assisting children within the context of their families.
THE SOLUTIONS
The overuse of residential care is a huge global problem. It will take a determined and coordinated effort to shift the way we assist vulnerable children.
CHANGING PRACTICES:
To reduce the over reliance on residential care, we need to apply good practice and scale back institutional services, and increase the availability of non-institutional child welfare services. Implementing this transition is a complex process called ‘deinstitutionalisation’.
SUPPORTING FAMILIES:
Poverty should never be the only justification for the removal of a child from parental care, rather a signal to provide support for the family (UN Guidelines on Alternative Care).
Volunteering:
ENCOURAGING ETHICAL SHORT-TERM MISSIONS & VOLUNTEERING
The plight of vulnerable children stirs many good-hearted people to volunteer within programs that assist children such as orphanages and shelters. Without careful consideration our good intentions often contribute to the exploitation and vulnerability of the children we seek to help. For this reason Kinnected calls for an end to orphanage tourism and volunteering and advocates for ethical alternatives.
Donor Awareness:
ADVOCATING FOR GOOD PRACTICE
As a donors it is important to know that the programs we support are operating lawfully and according to good practice that protects children's rights, including their right to be raised in a family.
This includes ensuring that the orphanage is legitimately a last resort option for children and is not actively recruiting children and separating families unnecessarily.
RESOURCES:
