Loving families for orphans in Thailand

With the COVID pandemic still ever present, 2021 gave Care for Children’s Thai team lots of opportunities to learn new skills and become more flexible. Due to restrictions the team was unable to travel around Thailand to train staff from all 77 government Shelters for Children and Families. Instead it was decided to conduct the training online via Zoom, finding ways to persevere through power cuts, weak internet connections and other teething problems! The team missed the deeper connections that face-to-face training affords but were so grateful that hundreds of shelter staff across the country were still able to learn how to run a family care programme. Between September and November 2021, we were delighted to learn that thirteen shelters were able to place 83 children into 76 foster families!

The phrase, ‘All children in Thailand belong in safe and nurturing families’, not only became the banner to mark the occasion of World Children’s Day 2021 and the anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, but also the focus for 2022. Partnering with four Child Welfare Homes, sixteen shelters and two like-minded NGOs, this year saw the return of in-person training via 29 workshops to take an even deeper dive into creating mechanisms to ensure that children are afforded every opportunity to grow up and thrive in loving families.

We now know that the outcome of our work in Thailand to see orphans and vulnerable children placed into local, loving families will long outlive our presence in the country!

Thank you for your support and for staying connected to our work.