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3.1.1 Strengthening families
3.1.1 STRENGTHENING FAMILIES
The best place for a child to grow up is with his or her own family. However, in many places around the world, families experiencing crisis or (extreme) hardship may have difficulties caring for their children. Apart from having access to enough nutritious food, water and healthcare, children need to feel protected, encouraged
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and respected by reliable adults who love them unconditionally.
SOS Children’s Villages works with families, caregivers and communities to prevent crises that can lead to child-family separation. Our services strengthen and stabilise families and their social networks so that children are better cared for and protected.
Prevent child-family separation
Making the family of origin stronger
So the children can continue to live with their parents in safety
Gatekeeping protocol* Reintegration
Kinship care
Children are cared for informally if, temporarily, they can no longer live with their parents.**
Foster care outside the wider family
Care in an SOS family
Children are formally taken in by the wider family.**/*** Children are cared for by a foster family when their own family is no longer able to look after them.**/*** In a family house in a Children’s Village or in the community.
Small group homes
Supervised accommodation for young people in our youth programmes or temporary care in a transit home.
Residential facilities
We collaborate to support these facilities in the de-institutionalising process.
* Compliance with the gatekeeping protocol means that there is careful consideration in each child’s case to decide which form of care is most adequate.
The outcome could also be that the child remains with the own family, on condition that the family receives support. ** SOS Children’s Villages strengthens the family so they can take care of their children. *** SOS Children’s Villages also helps improve the quality of and access to foster care.
Breaking the vicious circle
By making families and communities stronger we can break the vicious circle of vulnerability and stimulate sustainable change processes. We compile a personal and achievable family development plan with each family, which is based on their strengths and identifies the challenges they must face in order to effectively protect their children and look after them properly. Our family-strengthening programmes contain the following aspects.
Support in accessing basic needs and facilities In some countries families are overwhelmed by their struggle to survive. We can alleviate the worst misery by supporting families in gaining access to the authorities and essential provisions such as education (with school fees, school uniforms and materials) and basic medical care, and the provision of basic needs such as clothing and food – by distributing seeds to grow crops, cattle and/or nutritious meals. By providing this support, parents can focus on caring for their children and generating income.
Economic strengthening Creating economic opportunities helps families stay together. We jointly examine with families whether and how they can ensure sufficient income. We offer parents/caregivers vocational training so they can find a job or we provide them with funds to start a small business. Afterwards we teach them how to manage their income. We also look at creating economic opportunities in the community, for instance with microfinancing models and local Village Savings and Loan Associations, which make it possible for vulnerable households to save and borrow money.
Teaching parenting and care skills It is essential that parents/caregivers possess the knowledge and skills they need to care for and raise their children. Many parents lack this basis or allow it to slip through their fingers due to their circumstances. We build on a caring and safe home by providing workshops about, for example, parenting, hygiene and nutrition, the importance of having a good relationship with your child and positive discipline.
Rights education Awareness about the rights of the child is incredibly important – for the children and the parents/caregivers. We organise workshops on what the rights are and what they mean, as well as the consequences of domestic violence, the importance of family planning and need to have a birth certificate. We give children a voice and support families through advocating for the construction of essential facilities in their community, such as water wells for clean drinking water.
Working with communities We work closely with local organisations and authorities in the communities in which we operate to improve the lives of children and families for good. By facilitating sustainable change processes within communities, so-called civic driven change, they can take responsibility in the future for the vulnerable families in their midst. We achieve this by using the knowledge and contacts in the community and by improving skills and building capacities at the same time. The community must act as the strong social safety net that families can turn to for information, if they have questions or problems. Working with families and communities is complex and is highly dependent on the context. The situations of families, communities and countries vary. SOS Children’s Villages has gained years of experience in various circumstances and we use the lessons learned from previous programmes to improve existing and new programmes.
