Why State plans to phase out children's homes

Institutionalised children are far more physically stunted. [iStockphoto]

"I can clean dishes, clean the house and wash my clothes. Mum (foster) has taught me to do more other duties," he says.

The boy found a place to call home as a result of a robust campaign under the ambitious government-led National Care Reform Strategy for Children in Kenya that seeks to phase out all children homes in a 10-year plan that runs from 2022-2032.

According to Abdinoor Mohamed, Chief Executive Officer of National Council for Children's Services (NCCS), the idea is remove vulnerable children and orphans from the Charitable Children Institutions (CCI's) commonly known as children's homes and orphanages, and transition them to family and community-based care before the 2032 deadline.

"This is informed by many years of research that provides overwhelming proof that institutional care does more harm than good to children," said Mohamed.

According to Mohamed, the care reform strategy emanates from the belief that all children belong in a family backed by overwhelming scientific evidence that children under institutional care suffer severe and sometimes irreversible developmental setbacks as opposed to those raised in families and communities.

The plan also results from the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that states that children should grow up in a family environment and that priority should be given to support the child's parents and extended family.

"We are reintegrating children currently in institutions back to their families and communities. The strategy also proposes prevention of family separation to ensure that children do not end up in institutions as well as placing vulnerable children in alternative care," said Mohamed.

According to United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and other studies done globally, at least eight out of 10 of these children have biological and extended families and, with appropriate support, their families could look after them.

On this basis, the government has taken deliberate steps to transform the childcare system in the country.

Even as government deploy machineries to enact the directive, institutions are warming up to the idea and taking children in their care back to their families and seeking alternative care for those who do not have homes to go to.

At Hossana Children's home in Githunguri, Kiambu County, out of the 95 children who were placed in the institution, 11 have been reintegrated with their communities and only 19 are on residential care and 65 others on outreach programme.

By 2032, all children in the CCI's will have gotten their families or reintegrated with the communities. [iStockphoto]

The anticipation is that by the year 2032, all the children in the CCI's will have gotten their families or reintegrated with the communities.

However, there has been reluctance among some private children homes owners and donors holding on to children and murmuring on possible 'wastage of resources" and infrastructural investments.

"We need to ask ourselves is if it about investing in the children or in infrastructure because when the best interest of a child is realised, that argument should not matter," Ndung'u argues.

Kickstart Kids International's Olturoto Children's Village, a CCI that was providing care for abused, abandoned and neglected children in Kajiado County, has also reintegrated all the children back to the community.

Of the 34 children and young adults who were in the institution, 11 were reintegrated with their biological parents, seven placed in kinship care, five referred to other CCIs for long-term care and 11 young adults have either been transitioned into supported independent living where they have been assisted to enrol into vocational programmes, college or university.

It is one of the institutions listed by UNICEF for successfully closing the residential care facility and reunifying children with their relatives and communities.

According to the institution's General Manager Victoria Kamau, they are now focusing on follow-up support for the reintegrated children and on working with communities to prevent separation.

The facility has since been converted into a community hub to help them engage actively with the Olturoto community to deliver its child protection interventions.

However, the strategy comes with painful and costly consequences of people working in the CCIs losing their jobs while others being redeployed.

Peter Kamau, director of Child in Family Focus, an NGO journeying with CCIs in the transition journey to make family care a reality for children, said that there are documented negative outcomes about upbringing of children in homes including homelessness, prostitution for girls, criminal records for young men leaving home.

"We do not demonise children homes because they offer care the best way they know how, especially in a situation where there wasn't a lot of options presented by government for children," said Kamau.

Currently, the NGO is working with 10 institutions in Kiambu, and five others in Kajiado in the reintegrating children.

The engagement has also seen more than 100 parents trained to be foster parents out of whom 64 have been assessed and certified as foster parents hosting around 58 children who did not have homes to go to.

"A children home is like a magnet in the community that pulls needy families and children to think that it is the only solution to the problems they are encountering. Poverty should never be a reason to separate a child from their family," said Kamau.

"We are telling the homes that instead of taking care of children in an institution, help them in the community. It is very doable and even donors are warming up to see if children can be catered for in the families," he added.