Child Protection Thailand Project #31363

Loving families for orphans in Thailand

by Care for Children

Project Report | Jun 23, 2020
COVID-19 and our work in Thailand

By James Paul | Senior Grant Writer

Foster family

What a difference a few months make! We sent out our last update in early February, which detailed why ‘Life Story’ work is so important to Care for Children’s training and the children who are fostered or adopted.

As you know, we are working with Child Welfare Homes (orphanages) across Thailand, training them in family care (adoption and foster care) so that they can set and run their own family care programmes. This means they can move children out of the orphanage and into the safe, secure and loving environment of a local family.

The current epidemic has put our training on hold, although the team have been extremely busy refining our training materials and planning for the next phase of our work. With restrictions easing in Thailand, we are now gearing up to resume our training!

The impact of COVID-19 has had far-reaching implications for all of us. As the virus has spread across the world, we have faced new challenges, including physical and psychological health risks, school and business closures, family confinement, isolation and economic vulnerability.

Children within orphanages are particularly vulnerable to serious infectious illnesses. Orphanages tend to be extremely crowded and infections spread swiftly. As well as COVID-19, these include respiratory tract infections, intestinal parasites, and tuberculosis.

This epidemic has affirmed that children are better off in families, rather than in orphanages. If you would consider supporting us again in the future, we would be extremely appreciative. Thank you for staying connected to our work.

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Feb 27, 2020
Helping children understand their story

By Nathan Jarvis | Communications Officer

Earlier this month in the Guardian, the vital role of “Life Story” Work was highlighted and championed in an article you can read here. Tim Taylor, Care for Children Group Training Manager, shares why Life Story work is so important to Care for Children’s model, how it can positively impact the lives of looked-after children, and how you could explore its benefits if you care for foster or adopted children.

What is “Life Story” work?

Every child or young person is unique with a “life story” belonging to them.

However, children and young people who are placed in foster-care care or adopted may have little understanding of why they don’t live with their birth parents, the reasons for them entering care, and events that took place in their early lives. This can have a negative impact on their emotional wellbeing and self-esteem.

Conversely, ‘Life Story’ work can help children in care begin to understand and accept their personal history, helping to create a secure base to explore their past, present and future.

‘Life Story’ work at Care for Children

When a child moves from an institution to a foster family, their journey has often not been straightforward. At Care for Children, we place a high priority on training foster carers to develop a secure base for the children in their care. We incorporate ‘Life Story’ work into all of our training programmes in Thailand as one of the ways to do this. We train social workers, or family placement workers, to be able to develop life story books, which can be a complex and sensitive task. It’s important to capture a child’s journey, but the priority is always to protect the child, helping them to develop a more secure sense of their identity. Family Placement workers are then empowered to work with foster parents to help them maximise the impact of the work with their children. Across Thailand, this model is being used to help young children understand their history, developing a better sense of who they are and how their story might impact their future.

Throughout the training program, the sessions on “life- story” work are always among the most fruitful and eye-opening. It always gives us, and trainees, a real insight into how a vulnerable child’s journey is understood and treated, and enables us to make huge steps forward in our work.

We want children to flourish in their new families, so everything we can do to equip foster families to provide the best long-term care for children is at the heart of our work.

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Nov 25, 2019
Widening our reach across Thailand

By James Paul | Senior Grant Writer

In many countries, children growing up in orphanages is still the norm. We're committed to training orphanage staff to become family placement workers, whereby they are able to move children out of the orphanage and into local foster families.

In Thailand, government facilities called Child and Family Shelters play an important role in the care of vulnerable children. The Shelters act as ‘gatekeepers’ – the screening process which decides whether a child needs to be taken into care and which care option is most suitable for them. As the first point of contact between government care professionals and the children, the Shelters offer a vital service to children in their most vulnerable moment.

There are 76 Child and Family Shelters located across Thailand. Staff at the Shelters play an important role in deciding the best method of care for a child moving forwards, liaising with all the key stakeholders to give the children the best care moving forwards.

Unfortunately, the options that Shelters offer for children are limited. Currently, there are few alternative care options for children so staff often refer children to the nearest orphanage as a default. This puts a major strain on orphanages, as well as not always being in the best interest of the child.

Last year, we identified these Shelters as a key opportunity to further influence child welfare in Thailand, and play an important role in transitioning the system to place foster care at its heart. While continuing to train orphanages, we began exploring how best to work alongside the Shelters to enable fewer children to enter into orphanages in the first place.

If foster care is seen as a positive and viable alternative to institutions, then fewer children would have to experience the dangers and challenges of entering an orphanage. So in the last few months we've begun training staff at the Shelters in how to conduct foster care assessments.

"Sometimes we get cases of children to our shelter, and we will be able to screen the case and see if they have someone who is able to take care of them. Perhaps the parents are in prison, or they might have passed away. If our social worker comes across a case like this, they will be able to place these children in foster care. If we can care for these children in foster families, then the children will be able to develop and be a valued part of society."

Mrs Rachaya Hantrakul, Head of the Child and Family Shelter in Chiang Mai.

Shelters provide a vital service for families and children in moments when they're desperate for support, so we're proud to work alongside them. Thanks to your incredible support, we are able to provide ongoing training and support to these Shelters to ensure more children than ever are placed into loving families, where they can be loved and nurtured.

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