Orphans into loving families in Cambodia

As you may remember, Care for Children signed an agreement with the Cambodian government in January 2022, signalling the official launch of this new project. The purpose of this project is to equip the Cambodian government with the knowledge, skills and encouragement to develop their own foster care system to ensure children can be moved out of orphanages and into local, loving families.

It’s taken a lot of hard work to get to this point, but in February this year our team, based in Phnom Penh, delivered the first training workshop to the two orphanages we’re initially working with. By developing two orphanages (Residential Care Institutions / RCIs) into best-practice models of foster care, these will serve as inspiration to the government and a blueprint for all other orphanages across Cambodia to follow once this initial stage is complete and the project is rolled out nationwide.

The first (‘What is Foster Care?’) training workshops were delivered to the RCIs in February and March, followed by ‘Benefits of Family Care’ workshops in April/May and a ‘Preparing Children’ workshop in May. A total of 38 RCI staff were involved in the training.

The training has been received extremely well. Whilst trainees have received training before, this has tended to be very process heavy, with a focus on learning about a new form or a workflow. Our training covers these things (in a Cambodian context) but the feedback is that our training has much more depth and is much more accessible and interesting than people are used to. Trainees have loved that we have talked about social work theory, stories, experiences and conducted training in an interactive way. We often get asked ‘when is the next training happening?’.

“I think that this organization is doing a great job and I have good a relationship with them. Our RCI mostly takes care of the children with disabilities and no-one before wants to find a foster carer for them except Care for Children. Above all, it makes me feel very delighted. It is because the children with disabilities who live in this RCI have never been reintegrated into the community before. I strongly support Care for Children to help these children and expand the target group further. Care for Children’s training is benefitting both RCI’s leadership and staff.” Phnom Penh RCI Director

With ongoing technical support, the two RCIs will soon begin the process of safely moving children into local families, with regular follow-up support and monitoring. We’ll keep you updated with the progress!

Thank you for your support and for staying connected to our work.