Sustaining 50 Reunified Children in Rural Ethiopia

Over the past few months we took on another challenge, triplets who had come to our residential care facility the day they were born. The father had been advised to have them ‘sent away’ for adoption. Dialogue with the father had to be adjusted several time. First he would take them back at aged two, but the father remarried and his new wife was expecting a child. ‘Wait until after that’. Aged three… ‘We will take them aged four’. The local services was not well-informed about the new government guidelines about family re-unification and were not very supportive in our efforts, which didn't help to work with the father.

Aged four we again talked with the father and suggested a middle road which, consisted of moving them closer to the familiy in a temporary foster care arrangement, so that he and the rest of the family could visit and the triplets could meet their family. He agreed on condition that he could assign the foster mother. A strict contract was drafted for eight months after which he would take the children. THis was signed by social services the father and us.

A small house was found, an aunt was allocated the task of giving care and a cook was engaged and the children were moved. The first couple of weeks were not easy, four yea olds are very wise… but gradually and with close support from our Social Worker and telephone communication the children settled well. The mother’s family became frequent visitors, the local administrator said that the father had to come more often as part of the agreement. The father started more frequent visits and brought his new wife, who had recently lost her own child. A few weeks ago the father was finally ready to take his children and they were moved to his house. The change of house was not traumatic for the triplets as they knew the people who were present. They immidiatly started playing and have settled in very well. The father was very happy, he thanked our organization for our care but stated that he was the father and from now onwards he would take the responsibility for his children.

Some reunification is directly to their permanent home, others need to be done step by step and what we have found is that there is most often ways around constraints that require local government support and great patience with family.

We will continue to follow this family on a quarterly basis and provide financial support for three years. In the second year we will start working with the father to assist him to increase his income in order to make him self-sustained after three years.

We thank our donors very much for their involvement and interest in assisting us in this vital project.