scholarly journals Kenya’s Over-Reliance on Institutionalization as a Child Care and Child Protection Model: A Root-Cause Approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Njeri Chege ◽  
Stephen Ucembe
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
Efficiency And Effectiveness ◽  
Regulatory Measures ◽  
Family Based ◽  
Political Economic

Institutionalization of children who are deprived of parental care is a thriving phenomenon in the global South, and has generated considerable concern both nationally and internationally, in the last two decades. In Kenya, the number of children growing up in live-in care institutions has been growing ever since the country’s early post-independence years. Although legislative and regulatory measures aimed at child protection have been in place for a number of years now, and the national government appears to be standing by the commitment it expressed in recent times to implement care reform which encompasses de-institutionalization, the national child protection system remains very dependent on institutional care. Against the backdrop of a global and national movement towards de-institutionalization of child care and child protection, in this paper we tease out the range of factors reinforcing Kenya’s over-reliance on live-in institutions as a child care and child protection model. Numerous factors—structural, political, economic, socio-cultural, and legal—contribute to the complexity of the issue. We highlight this complexity, bringing together different angles, while pointing out the interests of the different stakeholders in reinforcing institutional care. We argue that the sustainability, efficiency and effectiveness of the intended change from institutional care to alternative family-based care requires that a root-cause approach be adopted in addressing the underlying child care and child protection issues.

Essence and Scope of Strengthening Community-Based Preventive Child Care and Protection Systems in India

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ranjan Kanti Panda ◽  
Lopamudra Mullick ◽  
Subhadeep Adhikari ◽  
Neepa Basu ◽  
Archana Kumari
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Child Care ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
National Level ◽  
Family Care ◽  
Children At Risk ◽  
Development Organization ◽  
Sectoral Development ◽  
Family Based

This article reflects different programmes and resource components that may be promoted to keep children with either their own family or within alternative family care, satisfying the rights of their overall development. In India, the concept of promoting family-based care mechanisms through government systems has not been fully realised, owing to lack of synergy between resource allocation and existing government programmes, policies and plans of action for child protection. Additionally, the common public discourse is that Child Care Institutions (CCIs) offer suitable care and protection for children outside the parental care. CCIs continue to be identified as the ultimate and the most common response for children at risk. This practice nullifies the scope to explore opportunities for the child to live with their family or in any alternative family care mechanisms. Child in Need Institute (CINI), 1 1 CINI is a national level development organization working on establishing child-friendly communities through its work on health, nutrition, child protection and education for the last forty-five years in India. partnering with Hope and Homes for Children, have analysed the vulnerability factors that led children to arrive at the selected CCIs in Ranchi and Khunti districts of Jharkhand in India. While working with children in the communities, CINI endeavoured to understand the drivers and vulnerabilities leading to family/child separation and what mechanisms could address the vulnerabilities at source and prevent separation. CINI promoted a participatory governance process with the involvement of community-level institutions along with children’s and women’s groups, incubating safe spaces for children that aided in identifying, tracking and promoting multi-sectoral development plans for children at risk. 

Policy implications for young people leaving care in China

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyuan Shang ◽  
Karen R. Fisher
Keyword(s):  
Young People ◽  
Good Practice ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
State Control ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Alternative Care ◽  
Family Based

This chapter reviews how the Chinese and international communities are sharing understanding about good practice in alternative care while children are growing up, particularly by prioritizing long-term family-based support. They are also changing alternative care practices to support children during their childhood and as they reach young adulthood, so that they are prepared emotionally and practically to live independently as adults in the same ways as their peers, away from state control. The chapter also looks at the policy and practice changes in China for the generation of young people who grew up in state care over the last 20 years, when alternative care was beginning to shift away from institutional care and recognize the rights of children and young people to an inclusive childhood and adulthood.

scholarly journals COVID-19 Reminds Us Why We Must Invest More on Family-Based Alternatives for Children

2020 ◽  
pp. 234930032097076
Author(s):  
Ankit Kumar Keshri
Keyword(s):  
South Asia ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Based ◽  
The Given

The emergence of COVID-19, followed by the subsequent lockdowns, is the reason why childcare practitioners, across the globe, are predicting an increase in the number of children requiring assistance for their care and protection. To fulfil those needs, increasing institutionalization of children is also expected. However, in the given circumstances, it is essential to bring in the findings of previous researches, establishing the fact that growing up in institutions causes long-term damages to the social, psychological and developmental wellbeing of children. This paper attempts to contextualize these aspects by underscoring the need for family-based alternatives and describing the existing situation of South Asia.

Belgium: Creeping Vulnerability of Children

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Vinck ◽  
Wim Van Lancker
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Important Lesson ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Poverty Risk ◽  
Poor Households ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
The Impact

Belgium has been plagued by comparatively high levels of child poverty, and by a creeping, yet significant, increase that started in the good years before the crisis. This is related to the relatively high share of jobless households, the extremely high and increasing poverty risk of children growing up in these households, and benefits that are inadequate to shield jobless families with children from poverty. Although the impact of the Great Recession was limited in Belgium, the crisis seems to have had an impact on child poverty, by increasing the number of children living in work-poor households. Although the Belgian welfare state had an important cushioning impact, its poverty-reducing capacity was less strong than it used to be. The most important lesson from the crisis is that in order to make further headway in reducing child poverty, not only activation but also social protection should be improved.

A Comparative Study of Structural and Process Quality in Center-Based and Family-Based Child Care Services

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 129-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathalie Bigras ◽  
Caroline Bouchard ◽  
Gilles Cantin ◽  
Liesette Brunson ◽  
Sylvain Coutu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Comparative Study ◽  
Process Quality ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Child Care Services ◽  
Family Based

Ghana's Children's Act 560: A Rethink of its Implementation?

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 151-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McCrystal ◽  
Esmeranda Manful
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Social Care ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
Initial Step ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
Administrative Framework ◽  
The Law

AbstractIn 1998 Ghana harmonised its child care legislation to conform to the Convention on the Rights of the Child by enacting the Children's Act 1998, Act 560. Some stakeholders expressed misgivings at its capacity to ensure child protection, but little literature exists on the views of professionals working within the law. This paper presents an investigation of the views of professionals who are mandated to work within the law to ensure the rights of the child to legal protection in Ghana. The findings suggest that there is a gap between legal intent and practice. It is concluded from these findings that for better child protection, the provision of legal rights for children is only an initial step; the administrative framework including better professional training, adequate resources for social care agencies and the establishment of new structures also needs to be reconsidered.

A History of Scottish Child Protection Law

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth McK. Norrie
Keyword(s):  
Child Protection ◽  
Juvenile Court ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
Child Victims ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Statutory Control ◽  
Radical Shift

This book explores the development of Scottish child protection law from its earliest days in the poor law, tracing the changing assumptions that underlay child protection processes, and the radical shift of emphasis from private (charitable) endeavour to public (local authority) duty. This book looks at the developing legal processes for removing children from abusive or neglectful environments, explores how child offenders and child victims came to be dealt with in the same processes, and examines the reasons why Scots law has managed to continue to cleave its own procedural path in the contemporary world. It explores both processes and outcomes, explaining how the juvenile court evolved into the children’s hearing, and it examines the substantive continuities between the various orders that could be made over children. The regulation of boarding out and fostering of children is compared with the regulation of institutional care, and the evolution of aftercare provisions is explained. The book also offers an analysis of the (dubious) legal basis for the Imperial practice of sending troubled children to the colonies, as part of a deliberate policy of spreading British “stock” across the world. The final chapter traces the origins and statutory control of the practice of adoption of children, from its days as an informal arrangement through its early manifestation as a minor action changing status to its present position as the most radical order that a court of law can make.

The impact of applying good governance standards in reducing corruption and achieving sustainable development in Yemen

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 769-791
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Significant Decline ◽  
The Core ◽  
Efficiency And Effectiveness ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Impact

This paper aims to highlight the role of applying good governance standards in reducing corruption and achieving sustainable development in Yemen, since good governance represents the core of the development process of countries and societies. Good governance is based on the principle of transparency, accountability, efficiency and effectiveness in order to raise the capacity and efficiency of the state and make it more capable and effective to achieve sustainable development. Corruption in all its forms is one of the biggest obstacles to sustainable development in Yemen, and a major reason for wasting state resources and limiting foreign investment, and thus the expansion of poverty, the poor, and other effects related to the failure to achieve sustainable development. Yemen is one of the most Arab countries facing major challenges in the field of implementing good governance and combating corruption in order to achieve sustainable development and achieve its goals at all political, economic, social and environment. This paper concluded that Yemen suffers from a lack of implementation and enforcement of good governance standards, as well as a rampant corruption, which has led to an expansion of poverty and a significant decline in development rates. Key words: Good Governance, Corruption, Sustainable development.

“The Minor Would Hinder the Mother in Finding Employment:” Child Protection and Women’s Paid Work in Early State Socialist Hungary

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 818-839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eszter Varsa
Keyword(s):  
Child Care ◽  
Residential Care ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Paid Work ◽  
Control Approach ◽  
Early State ◽  
Care Services ◽  
Residential Care Institutions ◽  
State Socialist

This article discusses the role of child protection and residential care institutions in mediating the tension between women’s productive and reproductive responsibilities in early state socialist Hungary. At a time when increasing numbers of women entered paid work in the framework of catch-up industrialization but the socialization of care work was inadequate, these institutions substituted for missing public child care services. Relying on not only policy documents but more than six hundred children’s case files, including Romani children’s files, from three different locations in Hungary as well as interviews with former children’s home residents and personnel, the article examines the regulatory framework in which child protection institutions and caseworkers operated. It points to the differentiated forms of pressure these institutions exercised on Romani and non-Romani mothers to enter paid work between the late 1940s and the early 1950s from the intersectional perspective of gender and ethnicity. Showing that prejudice against “Gypsies” as work-shy persisted in child protection work across the systemic divide of the late 1940s, the article contributes to scholarship on state socialism and Stalinism that emphasizes the role of historical continuities. At the same time, reflecting on parental invention in using child protection as a form of child care, the article also complicates a simplistic social control approach to residential care institutions in Stalinist Hungary.

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