Orphans into loving foster families in Vietnam

After facing the challenges of Covid, our team in Vietnam are excited to move forward with a fresh approach. Our objectives for 2024 encompass a comprehensive approach aimed at initiating significant changes in Vietnam's care landscape. Primarily, we seek to foster a deeper understanding among high-level government officials about the paramount importance of family-based care for orphans and vulnerable children, such as long-term foster care. This involves equipping local authorities and frontline care/social workers in Vietnam with the necessary knowledge and skills related to the family placement process, empowering them to move children out of institutional care and into local families.

Furthermore, our efforts extend to practical training sessions and effective case consultations tailored for institution staff and social workers. These sessions aim to equip them with the expertise required to implement and oversee successful family placement initiatives. In line with this, we're actively engaging in targeted awareness raising campaigns to promote family-based care for orphans and vulnerable children, attract capable family carers, and ensure their thorough training.

Our commitment also involves overseeing and facilitating the placement of children into local nurturing families, a pivotal step towards ensuring their well-being and development within supportive family environments. Alongside this, we're dedicated to providing specialized training that equips family carers with the essential skills and knowledge needed to effectively care for children facing unique circumstances.

Our efforts will culminate in organizing a focused conference that brings together key stakeholders, fostering collaboration and advocacy for the cause of family care. This conference will serve as a platform to amplify awareness, share insights, and encourage collective action towards realizing our vision of a family-oriented care system in Vietnam.

Through these concerted efforts and strategic initiatives, we aim to lay the foundation for the transformative shift towards family-based care, ensuring that every child in Vietnam finds a nurturing, loving family environment conducive to their growth and well-being.

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

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.