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Alternative care
Millions of children are living without the loving, nurturing care that allows them to be safe and grow up enjoying their childhood. Many children remain in families unable to offer them adequate care because they are too poor and lack adequate support. Other children end up in poor quality alternative care or on the street.
Save the Children recognizes that residential care can be appropriate for a small minority of children and should be available as a last resort for those children with no other options. In those contexts, regulated, safe institutions that meet agreed-upon standards can save children's lives and give them opportunities to learn and develop that they would not otherwise have. However, scientific evidence suggests that institutional care can cause significant harm to children's physical, intellectual and emotional development, with children under the age of three being particularly at risk.
Save the Children supports the development of family-based alternative care options in children's own communities for those children who cannot be with their parents. These options include foster care, kinship care and domestic adoption. The organization supports the transition away from existing institutional care services while at the same time ensuring minimum standards during the remaining time institutions provide care for children.
There is also growing international, regional and country level action towards tackling both care and protection issues via strengthening national child protection systems and reforming the care system within the broader framework.
Photo: Chloe White/Save the Children
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Determining Acceptable Customary Caregiving Arrangements with Congolese Refugees in Rwanda: Findings from rapid studies in two camps and a toolkit for moving forward
This report presents both the process and the findings from a recent attempt to better understand customary caregiving arrangements for refugee children living in two camp-based populations in Rwanda. The study emerged from UNHCR’s recognition that althou
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Kinship Care Report: Syrian Refugee Children in Jordan
Building upon a Save the Children regional participatory research initiative on kinship care that was undertaken in West Central Africa and East Africa, Save the Children in Jordan adapted the research methodology to focus on kinship care of children in a
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Tallinn Recommendations and Action Plan on Alternative Care and Family Support for the Baltic Sea Region 2015-2020
Government representatives, experts and professionals from the Baltic Sea Region including Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation, Sweden and wider Europe endorsed the Tallinn Recommendations
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For the Benefit of Children Alone? A discourse analysis of policymaking relating to children's institutions in Indonesia, 1999-2009
This doctoral thesis, written by Brian Keith Babington, utilizes a discourse analysis methodology to explore Indonesia’s policy change of the institutionalization of children – children who live in orphanages or other residential institutions. One goal of
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Guidelines for Kinship Care, Foster Care and Supported Independent Living in Liberia
Save the Children has been supporting the Department of Social Welfare (DSW) of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia to develop alternative care guidelines as well as the capacity building plan for the DSW. The guidelines are intended to p
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Children, Orphanages, and Families: A summary of research to help guide faith-based action
This resource aims to provide a concise overview of a range of studies and findings that can inform approaches to caring for children who, through orphan-hood, abandonment, or other causes, have been separated from parental care. Included are current glob
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Deinstitutionalisation and Quality Alternative Care for Children in Europe: Lessons learned and the way forward
Research has largely demonstrated that institutional care is particularly harmful for children, with long-term effects on their psychosocial wellbeing. Despite this, children continue to be placed in segregating institutions- environments that are inappro
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Institutional Care: The Last Resort (Policy Brief, 2014)
There are at least 2 million vulnerable children worldwide living in poor quality institutional care that is harmful to their physical, social and intellectual development, especially for those children who are under the age of three. A 2009 longitudinal
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Youth-Friendly Version of the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children
This document is a youth-friendly version of the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children and was developed by members of the I Matter International Youth Council from SOS Children’s Villages International. It intentionally avoids using the legal t
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Interagency Working Group on Unaccompanied and Separated Children (2013) Alternative Care in Emergencies Toolkit
A practical interagency resource designed to facilitate alternative care for children during and after an emergency. The Alternative Care in Emergencies (ACE) Toolkit is designed to facilitate interagency planning and implementation of alternative care an
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Child Protection Issue Brief: Alternative Care
This Issue Brief addresses Alternative Care and the relating key concepts of: unaccompanied children, separated children, caregivers, family tracing and reunification, and child-headed households. The UN Refugee Agency is in a unique position to emphasize
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Framework for the Future: Ending poverty in a generation
2015 is the year that governments are expected to agree a new global framework of concrete goals and targets to take the legacy of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) forward, and bring the commitments that were made at the United Nations Conference o