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Back to family: emergency foster care


€ 40.000 until 2024

Locatie

South Africa, Ugu-district

Educating parents

 

Unfortunately in South Africa, still many children live in large-scale institutional care centers. The amount of children living in these centers is estimated between 13,000 and 21,000. Despite adequate legislation about child protection that acknowledges the interest of family based care, many children who find themselves in crisis, do end up in institutional care.

Our partner organisation Give a Child a Family (GCF) has a lot of knowledge and experience regarding preventing children to be taken into institutional care and establishing foster care. GCF builds the system that will ensure that children in need find a temporary home in family-based settings rather than institutions. GCF prepares foster care families to take care of children who cannot live at home.  

Working with the government

 

Give a Child a Family works with the various child protection agencies and foster families to develop a strong and reliable foster care system.

 

Simultaneously, GCF builds the capacity the local government in the Ugu District on the importance of growing up in a family and influence the government to allocate more financial resources to place children in families instead of in institutional care centers. Family based care is not only cheaper, but also much better for the development of the child.

Give a Child a Family also shared largely the experience and knowledge that are gained by its interventions amongst governments and institutional care centers in the district.

Update

In 2021, GCF helped 38 children, 19 parents and caregivers, and 45 social/community workers with:
  • finding a safe home through temporary safe care parents;
  • supporting biological family so children can reintegrate with their families;
  • providing necessary medical support (e.g. admission to ICU) when needed;
  • placing vulnerable children under GCF care in a life-threatening situation
  • conducting training and obtaining official (government-issued) accreditations for new crisis foster care families;
  • understanding the importance of prioritizing foster care over institutional care.

You can watch the following video on the work of partner organisation Give a Child a Family.

“Every child needs one adult that is crazy about them.”