Orphans into loving foster families in Vietnam

Our training in Vietnam ensures staff from orphanages have the skills and knowledge to be able to safely place a child into a local foster family. Once the child has been placed in a family, the foster parents require ongoing support to ensure that they are equipped to support children at each stage in their development and to address any complex behaviours. 

One key area of support is around the impact of trauma on children. Children who experience trauma may not be able to process or communicate it immediately. Instead, the impact of it may emerge in later years. Foster carers are given an understanding of the impact that trauma can have on a child’s life. The training gives foster carers tools to help children regulate their emotions, teaches them how to care for children who have experienced trauma, and emphasises the importance of self-care.

Another area is attachment. Attachment is characterised by specific behaviours in children, such as seeking proximity to an attachment figure when upset or threatened. These types of behaviour are universal across cultures. Attachment theory explains how the primary caregiver-child relationship emerges and influences subsequent development. Foster carers are taught how important secure attachments are in the life of a child and how quality attachments impact the child’s wellbeing, social functioning and competency. They are also taught how the absence of attachment or poor or dysfunctional attachment might have impacted the children before coming into family care.

Only with ongoing support will foster carers be able to deal with the ups and downs of taking a child into their family.

Stay connected for more updates. Thank you so much for your interest and support.

In March this year, colleagues from Care for Children's UK, Cambodia and Vietnam offices gathered for three days of instrumental meetings with the Vietnamese government from Ministry level through to the Social Protection Centres (orphanages).

The Vietnam Project suffered most from the impacts and global distruption COVID-19 caused, and we've spent the last 10 months unfalteringly re-evaluating what's been achieved, identifying challenges, and geting this project back on track.

Something that hasn’t changed is our excellent relationship with the government. Some of our friendships go as far back as 2014, and this gives the project real depth and hope.

The Vietnamese government has taken huge steps forward in the last few years with new policies in favour of family-based care for orphans and vulnerable children! 

Our shared goal remains clear and keeps us all going: to ensure all children have the opportunity to grow up in a family. 

Stay connected for more updates. Thank you so much for your interest and support.

With Vietnam only coming out of lockdown in April 2022, COVID severely impacted project progress and momentum. Despite this, the team managed to conduct a number of training and coaching sessions, both online and face-to-face when restrictions allowed, to staff at the two pilot social protection centres, government officials, and also child protection officers working within the community.

Having already delivered the full training programme to the family placement teams from the two pilot sites, coaching during 2021 and 2022 focused on the assessment of children for foster care and the assessment of foster carers, as they prepared to move the first children into families.

We are also pleased to report that the government has now confirmed that they will not approve new proposals that involve any form of institutional care for children, and are committed to pursuing family-based alternatives, with institutional care as a last resort!

The Vietnam team also used lockdown as a great opportunity for learning, developing and honing their expertise in family care, as well as conducting an evaluation of the pilot project to inform the project going forward.

I hope this gives you an insight into what has been achieved in the last year or so, as well as the challenges that the project has faced.

Stay connected for more updates. Thank you so much for your interest and support.

With Vietnam coming out of lockdown in April 2022, and having delivered the full training programme to the family placement teams from the two pilot orphanages, Care for Children’s goal now is to transition the project from Stage 1 (pilot) to Stage 2 (national roll-out). During the national roll-out stage, Care for Children will roll out its training programme to all government orphanages across the country.

But what does Care for Children’s training programme consist of?

Our training programme equips family placement staff with the knowledge and skills to run safe and effective family care programmes, whereby children are moved out of orphanages and placed into local families. This training is adapted to suit each country we work in. The key components of our training are: 

Necessity, suitability, matching and planning 

Children should be placed in families in line with the necessity and suitability principles. Matching and case planning are crucial. We train family placement staff to ensure that children are placed in family care only when necessary and suitable. Training emphasises the importance of careful matching and detailed case planning so that families can best meet a child’s needs. 

Preparation 

Both the child and the family carers should be prepared for the placement before the child moves in with the family. We train family placement staff to know what steps to take to prepare the child and the family carers, including the importance of life story work and sharing appropriate and relevant information about the child’s background. 

Support services 

Family carers and children should be given adequate support and access to services. We train family placement staff on the importance of the provision of emotional, financial and psychological support for family carers and the children in their care. 

Recruitment and assessment 

Loving, local families should be recruited and assessed as to their suitability to become family carers. We train family placement staff to find family carers who have the commitment and emotional engagement necessary to care for a child in their family. 

Capacity building 

Initial and ongoing capacity building of both family placement staff and family carers is an integral part of providing a quality family care programme. We train family placement staff so they can offer family carers both pre-placement training and additional bespoke training. 

Monitoring and evaluation 

Monitoring and evaluation of family care placements is crucial to ensure that children are safe and are receiving quality care. We train family placement staff to embed robust monitoring systems into their programmes to ensure that children are safe and reduce the risk of placement breakdowns. 

I hope this gives you an insight into our training, which is such a key part of our work in transitioning countries from institutional care to family-based care for orphans and vulnerable children.

Stay connected for more updates. Thank you so much for your support.

We are pleased to report that borders are now open and some of the UK based team were able to go on a first post-pandemic visit to Care for Children’s Vietnam project team in Hanoi. It was great to catch-up with colleagues again after two years, and help rebuild some new momentum. Life has pretty much now returned to normal in Vietnam, which was great to see. Here is an offical news link following our recent meeting with MoLISA, our government partner.

We have seen one foster family approved by the Vietnam government and two more families are currently going through the application process. 

Because the children living in the orphanages are particularly vulnerable, when COVID hit the children were heavily protected, which slowed the project down. Despite this, children were still being assessed for foster care and we have three children on the waiting list in Hanoi.

Our government partners have now confirmed that they will not approve new proposals that involve any form of institutional care for children, and are committed to pursuing family-based alternatives, with institutional care as a last resort. Care for Children’s joint project with the Vietnamese government is a key part of this new direction.

Following this current pilot project stage, the next stage will see us roll out the project nationally (expected to start in 2023). Stay connected for more updates. Thank you so much for your support.