Orphans into loving foster families in China

We’re pleased to report that 2017 was an extremely successful year for the project. As you know, we deliver training in family placement to orphanages across Asia, enabling them to set up or expand local family placement programmes. This means that children can be moved out of the orphanages and placed with local, loving foster families.

China is too large for Care for Children’s team to train all state-run orphanages, so a more innovative and strategic approach is required. Our focus in 2017 was to build the capacity of five more experienced orphanages that are strategically located across the country. Our hope is for them to become regional training hubs and examples of best practice in family placement, with the capacity to train and influence other orphanages within their respective provinces.

Over the year, we delivered training to 249 orphanage staff from these five orphanages, as well as a number of other smaller orphanages. We were delighted that several staff members from the five orphanages joined our team to co-deliver some of the training workshops.

Furthermore, each of the five orphanages delivered at least one training workshop independently of Care for Children. These workshops were attended by foster carers, their own staff and, in some cases, staff from other orphanages. This is an extremely exciting development as it goes a long way to ensuring that this work is sustainable in the long-term.

Once again, thank you for your support and staying connected with our work.

We’re pleased to say that the Thai project has progressed with much the same momentum with which it left off in 2016. With the aim of rolling-out our family placement training across the country, the team completed core level training of all 20 government-run orphanages – a major achievement seeing as we only started our work in Thailand just five years ago!

Over the course of the year, the training team delivered 59 workshops for five orphanages, the last group to be trained: one located in the south of Thailand, one in the north-east and three in the central region, in total caring for over 1,300 children. A decision was made to hold the training sessions at each of the five project sites so that the maximum number of participants could attend, rather than at our training centre in the north. As four of the five institutions are homes for babies and are often quite short staffed, it is difficult for the caregivers to be gone for much longer than a day, therefore it is better if the training is on-site, even though some may have just completed a night’s shift beforehand.

Here are a few quotes from people involved in our programme:

“I am totally in favour of placing children from government orphanages into foster families, because I see the impact that living in an institution has on the children’s development and well-being. I want the children to be part of a family and receive all the quality care and warmth that a family can give. It would make such a difference to the caregivers in the orphanages if there were less children because as it is now, each of the buildings are so full and the caregivers are tired and stressed. My dream is to be able to move a whole building of children into foster families. Then we would be able to use that building as a child development centre.” Social Worker, Khan Tong Babies Home

“Living in an orphanage is like living in a box – there are so many rules. In a family, there are rules too, but there is also a sense of being free.  I’ve learnt so much from my foster family.  They have taught me the skills I’ll need for life.” Foster child

“I have worked with child welfare institutions for a long time and I understand their failings and weaknesses. I think the route we are on now [with foster care] is the right way to go. I have watched the development of the children in foster care over a long period of time; seeing the special love and bond that the children have with their families. Now I’ve seen how Care for Children has been imparting their skills and knowledge to the government orphanages and I think it is amazing and I want to thank you. Today as we visited the foster families, you could see something in the children’s eyes, the warmth and the happiness they have. The children’s development is so different from the children who live in the orphanages.  I think staff in these institutions agree that children need to be in families. I want to thank you for showing us the way for children to grow in a family environment and receive real warmth and real happiness.” Government official

Once again, thank you for your support and staying connected with our work.