Our 18 January statement:

INTERNATIONAL FOSTER CARE ORGANISATION

Unaccompanied and Separated Children in emergency-affected Countries

Guiding Principles

These Guiding Principles were originally developed in response to the 2004 Asian Tsunami and represented the views of the following agencies: the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Save the Children UK (SCUK), the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and World Vision International (WVI). They were endorsed by the International Foster Care Organisation (IFCO) and many other organizations working on behalf of separated children.

In January 2010 IFCO has updated this document in order to be able to respond to the many well-meaning requests received for information about how people might internationally foster & adopt children affected by the earthquake in Haiti.

“Natural disasters like the devastating earthquake in Haiti often lead to the separation of large numbers of children from their parents and families. The following guiding principles should apply to their care and protection.

Even during these emergencies, all children have a right to a family and families have a right to care for their children.  Unaccompanied and separated children should be provided with services aimed at reuniting them with their parents or customary care-givers as quickly as possible.   Interim care should be consistent with the aim of family reunification, and should ensure children’s protection and well-being.

Experience has shown that most separated children have parents or other family members willing and able to care for them.  Long-term care arrangements, including adoption, should therefore not be made during the emergency phase.

However, action to help separated children does require a long-term perspective and long-term commitment on the part of the organisations involved.  These organisations must also seek strong cooperation and coordination, and aim to speak with one voice.  All actions should be properly coordinated with the government authorities.

The following key definitions, principles and good practices form an agreed platform for partner organisations.

Definitions:

§ Separated children are those separated from both parents, or from their previous legal or customary primary care-giver, but not necessarily from other relatives.  These may, therefore, include children accompanied by other adult family members.

§ Unaccompanied children are children who have been separated from both parents and other relatives and are not being cared for by an adult who, by law or custom, is responsible for doing so.

§ Orphans are children both of whose parents are known to be dead.  In some countries, however, a child who has lost one parent is called an orphan.

Preventing separation:

Organizations and authorities must ensure that their actions do not inadvertently encourage family separation. Separation can be provoked when families lack the services they need to care for their children and believe such services would be available elsewhere, or when residential child care facilities are created which may provide better services than the family is able to access. 

Deliberate separations can be prevented by:

§ ensuring that all households have access to basic relief supplies and other services, including education;

§ limiting the development of residential care options, and restricting its use to those situations where it is absolutely necessary;

§ avoiding the removal of children to other countries for any reason unless critical medical care cannot be provided This should be provided as close as possible to their home.

Tracing and family reunification:

Identifying, registering and documenting unaccompanied and separated children are priorities in any emergency and should be carried out as quickly as possible. 

§ Registration activities should be conducted only by or under the direct supervision of Government authorities and mandated agencies with responsibility for and experience in this task;

§ The confidential nature of the information collected must be respected and systems put in place for safe forwarding and storage of information. Information must only be shared among duly mandated agencies, for the purpose of tracing, reunification and care;

§ Tracing is the process of searching for family members or primary legal or customary care-givers.  All those engaged in tracing should use the same approach, with standardized forms and mutually compatible systems;

§ The validity of relationships and the confirmation of the willingness of the child and family member to be reunited must be verified for every child;

§ No action should be taken that may hinder eventual family reunification such as adoption, change of name, or movement to places far from the family’s likely location until all tracing efforts have been exhausted. 

Care arrangements

Emergency care

Care for separated children should be provided in a way that preserves family unity, including of siblings, ensures their protection and facilitates reunification.  Children’s security should be ensured, their basic needs adequately met, and assistance provided for their emotional support.  

§ Community care, including fostering, is preferable to institutional care, as it provides continuity in socialization and development.

§ However, children not in the care of their parents or customary caregivers may be at heightened risk of abuse and exploitation. The most appropriate carers may need extra assistance to assure children’s protection and material needs are met. Provision must therefore be made therefore for monitoring and support to foster families.  

§ For those children for whom institutional care is the only solution, centres should be small, temporary and organized around the needs of the child. It should be made very clear that the objective of residential care is reunification or placement in the community and rigorous screening procedures should be in place to ensure only appropriate admissions.

§ Removing children from familiar surroundings will increase their distress and can hinder their recovery. Children should not be removed to other countries for any reason unless critical medical care cannot be provided and then, this should be as close as possible to their home and they should be accompanied by a care-giver known to the child.

Durable arrangements

During the emergency period permanent care arrangements other than reunification should be avoided. 

§ Efforts to develop, and to place children in, long-term residential facilities should be discouraged

§ Adoption must be avoided so long as there is reasonable hope of successful tracing and reunification.

Should reunification not be possible within an appropriate period, or found not to be in the child’s best interests, other medium and long-term options such as foster care, group homes or adoption will need to be arranged.

§ Decisions about long term placements must be considered and decided individually for each child, in the context of national child welfare policy, legislation and practice, and corresponding to the child’s best interests and his/her developmental needs.

§ At all times, children must be kept informed of the plans being made for them and their opinion taken into consideration. 

§ In any form of care siblings must be kept together.

§ The provision of care should be based on the best interests of the child and should not be used to promote political, religious or other agenda. 

§ Communities should be supported to play an active role in monitoring and responding to care and protection issues facing girls and boys in their local context.

These provisions apply to both short and long term care arrangements.

Adoption

Adoption, and particularly inter-country adoption, should not take place during the emergency phase.

Any adoption must be determined as being in the child’s best interests and carried out in keeping with applicable national, international and customary law.

When adoption is deemed in the child’s best interest, priority must be given to adoption by relatives, wherever they live. If this is not an option, preference will be given to adoption within the community from which the child comes, or at least within his or her own culture.

Adoption should not be considered:

·         If there is a reasonable hope of successful tracing and reunification;

·         If it is against the expressed wishes of the child or the parents;

·         Unless a reasonable time has passed during which all feasible steps to trace the parents or other surviving family member have been carried out.”

CLICK BELOW for the Final Report from Wilton Park Conference, The Neglected Agenda:
      Protecting Children without Adequate Parental Care.
      Policy recommendations and conclusions from November’s high level
      conference focused on gathering data, harnessing political will,
      strengthening systems, securing funding, and increasing public and
      political understanding regarding children without adequate parental care.

http://bettercarenetwork.org/bcn/details.asp?id=21899&themeID=1001&topicID=1010

UK > Gordon Brown apologises to child migrants sent abroad

THE NEXT IFCO WORLD CONFERENCE





http://www.ifco2011.com

LOTS OF REGULARLY UPDATED NEWS ON THE IFCO WEB SITE

- visited by 16163 people from 179 countries in the last year! 

www.ifco.info

IFCO's Training & Development Bureau trainers at

work in Kosovo - "Special Care for Special Needs"

Save The Children-Kosovo contracted with the International Foster Care Organization (IFCO) to develop Train the Trainer Curriculum to prepare foster carers for caring for children with special needs.  The initial training was done in March of 2009. 

A second contract between Save the Children and IFCO resulted in three sessions consisting of 9 days of training for a total of 47 participants in October 2009. 

If you want to know more about IFCO's Training & Development Bureau and how you may help them OR they may help you please write toifco@ifco.info

IFCO's trainers in Pristina were IFCO Board member Myrna McNitt (USA), Keith Henderson (Ireland) and Helen Jones (UK) with support from Kathleen Kufeldt (Canada)

There will be a workshop at the Brighton conference about IFCO's work in Kosovo.

Some of the comments from Kosovan participants are below: 

“Never give up on a child.”

“Until now we assisted the children with special needs, but now we are going to improve our support through the knowledge that we refreshed or learned through this training.”

“I was impressed by the experiences that no matter how big the disability there is someone to take care of them.  This gives me the motive to look after finding more foster families.”

“We understood that miracles in children can take place.  Thank you for sharing these lessons.”

“I am forced to believe that by increasing our commitment we will improve our performance towards the child in care.”

“For me helpful yes - the ecomap which should be applied when assessing carers.”

“This training focused on the foster care family.  It is necessary to have training for care of abandoned children.”

“Helpful in considering how to select the foster carer.”

“Helpful was exchange of experiences.  The training was a good experience.”

“I want to know more on how to assist a foster family.”

“Helpful was explaining the relationships in the foster family.”

“I want to know more of the motive that pushes people to the family to foster and to talk of the special needs of children, and how to care and requirements to support them.”

“It was helpful information on foster care children who were abused….open communication in training….like talk of responsibilities and roles….enjoyed mutual respect.”

“Helpful was learning about the characteristics of abused and neglected children.”

“I want to know more on emotional abuse.”

“Learned that even foster carers can abuse children.”

“Very helpful training and exchange of information.”

“Very good and understandable.”

“To organize more trainings of this kind and provide literature of this kind.”

“I want to know more on emotional abuse.”

“Learned that even foster carers can abuse children.”

“Very helpful training and exchange of information.”

“Very good and understandable.”

“To organize more trainings of this kind and provide literature of this kind.”

& from IFCO's final report: "The Kosovan Ministry and Save the Children continue to represent an exemplar of how State and NGOs cooperative work can happen.  The trainers appreciate how the partnership was extended to the International Foster Care Organization." 

IFCO at the European Parliament January 2010

Eurochild’s European Survey on Children without Parental Care was launched at the European Parliament on January 27th 2010. Since August IFCO has been a member of Eurochild - a network organisation promoting for quality and care of children and young people. The aim of this European-wide survey was to provide an overview of the numbers of children concerned, the profiles of children in care, their outcomes, the institutional framework and availability of data, and the existence of standards and support for children’s participation.

At the launch, a round table discussion was facilitated by IFCO President and Eurochild’s Thematic Working Group on Children in Alternative Care Co-Chair, Chris Gardiner.  IFCO was also represented at this event and at the Eurochild Thematic Working Group for Children in Alternative Care by IFCO Board Member and Youth Committee Chairperson, Jean Kennedy.

The Preface to the Eurochild Survey had been co-written by the IFCO Youth Committee and Power4Youth. Power4Youth is a European platform for young people with alternative care experience. http://www.power4youth.net/ 

We co-wrote the preface to this survey, highlighting issues we felt were particularly important from the point of view of young people. The IFCO Youth Committee and Power4Youth share common visions and goals and worked together previously.  

One of the main concluding comments by the two organisations was a call for direct commitment - “The collection of data, its interpretation and use, to promote the well being for children in alternative care, needs to be acted on at European Union level as well as at member state level. This will ensure that we, as those accountable for child protection and well being, are continuouslyworking for every child, to the best of our collective ability.” This Survey gives an informative overview to the care systems in place in Europe, where it is estimated 1 million children are in public care. You may be surprised by the overall statistics within your own country, as well as within the European Union. This Survey is available through the Eurochild Website and the Executive Summary is available at:

http://www.eurochild.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Publications/Eurochild_Reports/FINAL_EXEC_SUMMARY.pdf

The picture above is of Rinske Mansens, Power4Youth Board Member and Jean Kennedy, IFCO. Though serious work was done, we were still able to make time to note the amount of times (and languages) ‘European Parliament’ appeared on the coffee cups!

IFCO's Conference Guidelines for both Regional & World Conferences are currently being revised and will be available in early 2010 in order that member organisations may prepare bids for the 2012 (Regional) & 2013 (World) IFCO Conferences. 

Decisions on successful bids will be taken at the Brighton Conference in July 2010.

If you are an IFCO member who may be interested in having an IFCO Conference in your country please get in touch by email any time.

In most places around the world, the definition of family has broadened dramatically over the last few decades. With increasingly complex arrangements of in-laws, step-relatives, foster families and adoptive families, our understanding of the bonds that hold people together has become correspondingly deeper.

Yet here in Japan, where so much of modern life is still based on the patriarchal ie system, “family” is generally restricted to the traditional ties of blood and marriage. For those households that fall outside of the norm, life can be difficult indeed. Recently, a coalition of organizations has been seeking to reform current policies, in part by heeding the voices of those most affected: children in institutional care.

Over the course of a weekend last month, an array of such groups held a symposium in Meguro to discuss ways they can make a difference. The event was co-organized by the Anne Funds Project, a Tokyo-based NPO that promotes foster care and helps foster kids become more self-reliant, and the Orange Ribbon Campaign, a movement devoted to preventing child abuse. The two-day gathering featured a roundtable discussion that included social workers, children in foster care, and other adults who had come out of institutional care. While each speaker offered a distinct perspective, a few themes cropped up again and again.

One of these is a lack of choice for people under the care of the state. In Japan, the overwhelming majority of kids without families to look after them are placed in government-run facilities. In 2007, 35,925 such children were institutionalized, while only 3,633 were placed with foster families. Under Japanese law, people in state care have very little say in where they are placed. The wishes of the biological parents—even in cases where there has been abuse—tend to carry more weight than the child’s, and the final decision is often made by a judge who may not have any experience in family law or social work.

For foster families, meanwhile, the biggest issue is an absence of support. They often face resistance and a lack of understanding from schools, medical institutions, neighbors, friends—even their own families. Without well-established government programs or local support groups to help them, they end up feeling isolated and lost.

One thing everyone seemed to agree on was that institutional homes, even “family-style” ones, were not serving the interests of children or society. Corporal punishment is still allowed in Japan, large institutions with more than 50 kids remain common, and even those social workers who want to create a warm and affectionate environment feel constricted. As one of them put it, “How do you express emotion in an institution where a hug could be considered sexual harassment?”

Another issue addressed at the convention was the lack of after-care provisions in Japanese law. When institutionalized children legally become adults, they often end up completely on their own, without the money or means to support themselves. Anyone who has ever tried to rent an apartment without a proper koseki family registry and Japanese guarantor will know what kinds of difficulties this presents.

The highlight of the convention was the presentation by keynote speakers Emmanuel Sherwin and Stephen Ucembe, who are social workers with the International Foster Care Organization (IFCO). Both men themselves are veterans of child-care facilities in their home countries of Ireland and Kenya, respectively.

Sherwin spoke on the importance of empowering children to make changes in their own lives. Although he warned that meaningful change doesn’t happen in one day, he pointed to Irish laws enacted in part due to his advocacy efforts, including the formation of a union for children in care, and guaranteed access to university for all institutionalized kids. Ucembe focused on the importance of love and how a child’s treatment in care can create repeating patterns of neglect and abuse.

“When I was a child, I don’t remember ever getting a hug,” he says. “How do you love if you’ve never been loved? How do you bring up your own family if you’ve never been brought up in one?”

Those are questions that Japan’s government will have to wrestle with. But more importantly, they are questions that all of us in Japan should think about, because without accommodating foster parents, without understanding neighbors, and without a willingness to accept non-traditional families, even the best government initiatives are bound to fail.

To find out more about the Anne Funds Project, see http://members.jcom.home.ne.jp/ankikin/new/english1.html (English & Japanese). For more about the Orange Ribbon Campaign, see www.orangeribbon.jp (Japanese). Details about the IFCO are available at www.ifco.info

IFCO's President, Chris Gardiner, recently presented a training workshop on how this process works for Inclusion Europe 

The European Association of Societies of Persons with Intellectual Disabilities and their Families 
Website: http://www.inclusion-europe.org  

Some useful linksfrom the training:  

* The NGO Group for the Convention on the Right of the Child

http://www.childrightsnet.org/

The Alternative report search tool

http://www.crin.org/NGOGroupforCRC/search.asp

The CRC NGO Group Reporting Guide – this is the English version but also available in French, Spanish & Russian

http://www.crin.org/docs/Reporting%20Guide%202006%20English.pdf

Good examples of NGO alternative reports:

http://www.crin.org/docs/Romania_NFC_NGO_Report.pdf

http://www.crin.org/docs/Serbia_Coalition_NGO_Report.doc

Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/CRPDIndex.aspx

The guidelines on the treaty-specific document to be submitted by States Parties under article 35 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The report is also available in French, Spanish, Arabic Chinese and Russian.

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/HRBodies/CRPD/CRPD-C-2-3.pdf

NFPA USA

http://www.nfpainc.org/

Registration is now open! Please join us at the 40th Annual Education Conference in Baltimore, MD
May 29th-June 1, 2010