BCN Newsletter: 11 January 2012

 

To the Better Care Network,

 

Happy New Year and our warm wishes for 2013!

 

The Better Care Network is pleased to share that Florence Martin has started a consultancy with the Secretariat to support BCN's knowledge management and technical support. Florence Martin is a human rights lawyer and a clinical social worker with over 15 years of experience in child protection and children's care in both emergency and development contexts. Her work has focused on reforming and strengthening national child protection systems, including the framework for the delivery of social services and social work practice with children and their families. Florence can be reached at [email protected]. Please join us in welcoming Florence to the Better Care Network community!

 

The Better Care Network, in collaboration with UNICEF, is documenting childcare reform in Sub-Saharan Africa and seeking relevant documents, reports, guidelines, tools, and resources. Please see the Request for Information below for further information.

 

In this edition, you will also find some important new research on: 

  • child abandonment in Europe,
  • foster care (confiage) in Senegal, 
  • and the impact of post-election violence and drought on children connected to the streets in Rift Valley, Kenya. 

Lastly, please note that the Better Care Network is welcoming 2013 with a new email addresses. You can reach us at [email protected] as well as [email protected] and [email protected].

 

All the best,

 

The BCN Secretariat

 

 

IN THIS ISSUE
Request for Information
Child Abandonment and Its Prevention in Europe
The Chronic Urban Emergency in Rift Valley, Kenya
Child Fostering in Senegal
Job Posting
General Information

 REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

The Better Care Network, in collaboration with UNICEF, is planning to document significant childcare reform work being done in four  Sub-Saharan African countries on legislation, policies, and programs including service delivery, advocacy, and networking in order to promote learning and exchange within the region. As part of this process, we are seeking documents, reports, guidelines, tools and resources on childcare in Sub-Saharan Africa. We would greatly appreciate the following information: 

  • Published literature from Africa or on African childcare issues, including peer-reviews articles, and journal reviews;
  • National and regional policy, standards, and legislative documents, such as national alternative care guidelines and standards, child protection policies, regional and national strategies or plans for orphans and vulnerable children; 
  • Conference materials, presentations, and outcome documents on care reform or alternative care in Sub-Saharan Africa; 
  • African country childcare or alternative care assessments conducted by universities, UN agencies, NGOs, CRC Committee, Hague Secretariat, etc.; 
  • Reports documenting country-level service delivery, data available on care, advocacy and networking. 

Please forward any relevant documentation that you may have to Kelley Bunkers and Ghazal Keshavarzian, who have been commissioned to conduct this work at [email protected] or [email protected] by 21 January, 2013. 

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration. We greatly appreciate any documentation that you are able to share to support this effort. 

 

NEW IN RESEARCH: 

Child Abandonment and Its Prevention in Europe

This comprehensive manual provides an overview of child abandonment and its prevention in Europe, exploring the extent of child abandonment, possible reasons behind this phenomenon, the consequences of abandonment, and good practices in terms of prevention. For the purposes of the EU Daphne-funded project, child abandonment is defined in two ways, namely open and secret abandonment.

Country specific in-depth reviews of child abandonment and its prevention are provided for 10 countries (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and the UK). Furthermore, as part of the project, governments from all 27 EU member countries were written to, requesting information in relation to open and secret abandonment. Of the 22 countries that responded, Slovakia had the highest number of children openly abandoned, followed by the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Poland. The primary causes of child abandonment have been identified as poverty, being a single parent, post-natal depression, mental illness, a lack of sexual health education, poor family planning knowledge, restricted access to abortion, and a host of other reasons. Some of the preventative actions taken by member countries include providing social assistance, day care facilities, mother-baby units, family planning services, financial support, and more.

To access the full manual, please visit: http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=30091&themeID=1001&topicID=1006

 

 NEW IN RESEARCH:

The Chronic Urban Emergency in Rift Valley Kenya: Report from Profiling Children Connected to the Streets

Research was conducted in five Rift Valley towns in Kenya in 2011 to understand the link between emergencies, in particular Post Election Violence (PEV) and drought, and the perceived increase of children joining the streets. Findings show that food insecurity is one of the biggest factors that cause children to drop out of school and gravitate toward the streets to find food and earn money. Other major factors included the death of a caregiver, abuse at home, particularly when children are looked after by extended family, step parents or family friends, and being unable to go to school due to cost. Displacement as a result of Post-Election Violence was also a major factor with 37% of all children interviewed in the streets being internally displaced (IDPs).

Recommendations advocate for an urgent, large-scale response to place children currently connected to the streets in durable situations such as family reintegration or other forms of care, in tandem with a multi-sectorial development approach to tackle and prevent the crisis. More specifically pertaining to alternative care, these recommendations urge the Government of Kenya's Children's Department to expand alternative care options including alternative family-based care and independent or family-linked living for youth. The authors suggest that the Department rapidly scales up child reintegration and protection measures by conducting family tracing and arranging alternative care settings.

 

To read the full report, please visit: http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=30092&themeID=1004&topicID=1027

 

NEW IN RESEARCH:

Child Fostering in Senegal

Child Fostering in Senegal 

Child fostering is a widespread social practice in Africa, whereby parents send their biological children to live temporarily in another household. A nationally representative household survey conducted in 2006-2007, the survey Pauvret� et Structure Familiale, found that approximately 10% of children are fostered and 32% of households either send or receive foster children. Using data from the survey, this study aims at shedding light on this common practice (confiage) in three ways. First, the study examines the characteristics of households and individuals involved in fostering to better understand the motivation to foster. Second, the study examines the impact of fostering on host households and on sending households. Lastly, the study examines the impact of fostering on the foster child.

 

The paper examines three child outcomes: ever attending school, ever working, and completing more than 28 hours of domestic work per week. A large proportion of fostered children are in the care of their grandparents (25%), with almost equal numbers fostered with uncles and aunts (22%). Access to education is a major motivation for fostering a child, particularly boys, but girls were more likely to be fostered to respond to household demands for domestic work. Overall, however, the authors of the study did not uncover any evidence pointing to particularly negative outcomes for fostered children, be it compared to children in the households hosting them or in the households they left. The paper recommends policies that target households that need a lot of domestic work or policies that at least ensure that domestic work does not come at the expense of schooling will benefit fostered children.

 

To access the full report, please visit: http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=30093&themeID=1002&topicID=1013

 

 

The Long-Term Impact of Child Fostering in Senegal 

In Senegal, about 14% of adults were fostered in their childhood. Using data from a nationally representative household survey conducted in Senegal in 2006-2007, the survey Pauvret� et Structure Familiale, this paper studies the long-term outcomes for adults who have been fostered in their childhood, including children fostered to Koranic schools . It focuses its analysis on education, first employment and current employment as well as on marriage. 

 

Ranging from no difference to clear improvement compared to non-fostered individuals, men always seem to gain from fostering through better education, better job market outcomes, and the possibility of marrying earlier. Women's trajectories were more diverse: those fostered in more traditional ways (fostered to the mother's kin group, to grandparents or at a young age) were likely to marry earlier and more often in a polygamous union than non-fostered women, but in less traditional cases (fostered to the father's kin group, to uncles and aunts, or older), women could gain (better education, less polygamy). The authors concluded that the long-term impacts of fostering are, therefore, heterogeneous and depend on the reasons, locations of fostering, host parents, fostering age, and gender.

 

To access the full report, please visit: http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=30094&themeID=1002&topicID=1013

 

 

 

JOB POSTING

SOS Children's Villages UN Representative in the Liaison & Advocacy Department in New York 

  

SOS Children's Villages is looking for a dedicated individual to join its Liaison & Advocacy Department in New York as the United Nations Representative. He or she will represent the organization at the UN and NGO working groups, contributing to their advocacy activities. Furthermore, the representative will monitor and analyze international trends in the field of child rights and childcare. An applicant must have a master degree or equivalent professional qualification in human rights, political sciences, social sciences, or social work along with a minimum of 5 years working experience. He or she must have very good knowledge of UN systems and procedures, be fluent in English, and possess excellent advocacy, networking, and communication skills.

 

All interested applicants should send their applications including a curriculum vitae, an application letter, and salary expectations by 25 January, 2013 to [email protected]

 

GENERAL INFORMATION

 

The newsletter participants, currently 3,156 in total, are working on issues related to the care and support of vulnerable children across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas.  The purpose of the newsletter is to enable members to exchange information on matters of mutual concern. If you would like to share a document, raise a specific issue, or reach out in any other way to the Network, please send the information to us at [email protected].  In the interest of keeping messages consolidated, we will manage announcements on the newsletter and send out a few messages each month.

 

We would like to involve as many people as possible who are concerned with better care issues in the Network. Please advise anyone who would like to be added to the newsletter to send us a message at [email protected] with"newsletter request" in the subject line. Alternatively, visit the homepage of the Better Care Network website at http://www.bettercarenetwork.org and click on the upper right box where it says, "click here to sign up for our email announcements."