Community Based Care for Separated Children

Worldwide, children can become separated from their parents, caretakers, and communities as a result of armed conflict, natural disasters, pandemics such as AIDS, and various forms of exploitation and abuse. To address this issue, the International Save the Children Alliance organised a project called "Care and Protection of Separated Children in Emergencies". This initiative explored issues of fostering, group care, and other types of care arrangements for children and adolescents separated in situations of conflict and disaster. It sought to better understand various categories of "hidden" separated children as well as those whose care and protection needs are being addressed. The project produced case studies in 6 countries. Participative research with children themselves was a key theme. Case studies and a literature review produced through this initiative can be downloaded by clicking here.

This paper is a product of that multi-year research initiative. According Save the Children Sweden, the prevailing response has been to place these children in a residential care setting. Shortcomings of this model are discussed in relation to community based care approaches, e.g., (extended) family and foster home solutions for separated children.

Excerpts from the paper follow:

Research has clearly established that institutional forms of care for children can often have a serious and negative impact on children's development and on children's rights. Partly in response to this, recent years have seen an increasing emphasis on the development of community-based approaches, both to prevent separation, and to ensure that children who lose, or become separated from their own families, can have the benefits of normal family life within the community.

This paper offers a ten-point analysis of the typical negative features of institutional care, indicating how these impact both on child development and onchildren's rights. These are illustrated from the research, mainly in the words used by children themselves. These include the segregation, discrimination andisolation that institutionalised children often experience; the fact that admission is often based on the needs of parents, not the interests of children; the lack of personal care and stimulation; the lack of opportunities to learn about the roles of adults; the high risk of institutional abuse; the lack of attention to specific psychological needs; and finally, reflecting all of these features, the fact that institutionalised children often experience problems in adjusting to life outside of the institution.

The paper looks at community-based care first under the heading of preventive approaches which aim to avoid the unnecessary separation of children from their families. It then looks at alternative care strategies: in the light of anthropological knowledge about traditional patterns of fostering, it is pointed out that some traditional forms of substitute family care are not based on the best interests of the child and may both have a negative impact on child development and infringe children's rights. It suggests that fostering programmes need to be firmly embedded in the local community and supported by an agency with a solid knowledge of child development and child rights. The preparation of the foster family (including other children and the extended family) and the active participation of the child are important aspects of good practice. The issue of monitoring and support to fostered children and their carers is a difficult and vital programme component in ensuring that children's rights are protected. In emergency situations, the capacity of the community to exercise ownership of separated children may be limited: this may call for an initial period of agency support coupled with a long-term community-mobilisation approach to facilitate the gradual community assumption of responsibility for separated children.

Despite these difficulties, community-based care is likely to be a more appropriate and a more cost-effective response than residential forms of care. However, theremay be a few circumstances under which residential care may be preferred in meeting specific objectives, and in others there may be little choice. But the dangers in reproducing some of the damaging effects of institutional care are great.

The paper concludes with some pointers towards the need for further research, and identifies the need to place much more emphasis on what children themselves have to say in research, in policy formulation and in developing good practice.

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