Our commitment to a future without orphanages

For many years, we worked closely with selected residential care facilities to provide additional support for children there. Our volunteers and staff made amazing contributions to improving the lives of these children through volunteer work in orphanages abroad. However, we’ve always supported local partners who aim to reduce the number of children in residential care, because we believed that institutional care should be the absolute last resort for any child.

At the same time, we kept ourselves abreast of the new research in the area of childcare and recognised the concerns raised about the orphanage industry. Over a number of years, we’ve seen a growing amount associating orphanage care with child trafficking and exploitation. As an ethical volunteer organisation, we’ve never – and will never – knowingly place children at risk through our programmes.

We embarked on a review and assessment of where our volunteers make the most sustainable and significant impact, especially when working with children. A recurring theme from this process was that we should be focusing on community-based care for children to make the most sustainable and positive impact possible.

With more than eight million children in residential care globally, investing in family and community-based care solutions for children is crucial. Up to 80% of children living in residential care have one or more living parents. With extra support, many of these parents may be willing and better able to care for them. In the future, we’ll continue to focus on providing support exclusively to community-based childcare programmes.

At the time we stopped volunteering in orphanages, we worked with four residential care facilities for children in Jamaica. Our volunteers assisted with the general care of the children, along with math and reading fundamentals. The move away from working with residential care facilities wasn’t welcomed at first. The change was challenging at that time, because both staff and volunteers had an established workflow with the care facilities and care givers. We were sensitive to the needs and desires of our stakeholders and were careful not to make any sudden changes that might adversely affect the children. Therefore, the transition was done over a period of months.

During this period, the local team worked on creating a project model that would continue to support vulnerable children, but focus on prevention efforts, rather than providing a structure that supports keeping children in homes. Projects Abroad took a holistic approach, and channeled volunteers’ skills into several prevention efforts:

1. Provide support in local schools for children with learning difficulties, through Childcare Projects: We found that a large number of disadvantaged children didn’t have academic support at home. In some cases, they also faced abuse at home. They had difficulties learning and required one-on-one attention to keep up in class. We ensure our volunteers are equipped with the skills and tools to support these children.

2. Educating communities about children’s rights through a Human Rights Project: Volunteers with the appropriate skills and academic background engage in a Child Rights Educational Campaign. At the core of this campaign, volunteers educate children as young as three about their rights and responsibilities under the law, using age-appropriate techniques and material. We also educate childcare providers, parents, and the public. We’ve found that cultural ways of parenting and disciplining children (physical punishment and verbal abuse) often lead to court action and separation of children from their families. Knowledge of the law surrounding childcare and ‘appropriate’ forms of discipline helps to mitigate incidents of abuse leading to separation.

3. Raising awareness about mental health through our Psychology Project: We engage children and adults in workshops and other forms of information-sharing activities. The following activities help to mitigate incidents of child abuse and neglect leading to forced or voluntary separation:

• Address the more individual causes and effects of child abuse
• Identify signs of psychological issues
• Encourage a better understanding of mental health
• Provide tools to help to manage one’s emotions and actions
• Encourage positive parenting and share support services available to both parents and children

These initiatives have moved us into a position where we’re actively trying to reduce the number of children in group homes by giving families the skills and information they need.