May 08 was indeed a busy month with SFAC at work in 2 locations at opposite sides of the globe. Colombia with Steve Bartel and Formando Vidas in early May and Cambodia at Chab Dai coalition in late May. It was a tiring few weeks but a wonderful privilege to be part of developing child care programmes in these countries and involved with such passionate and capable workers who give much of themselves in looking after the welfare of vulnerable and exploited children. SFAC look forward to a continued partnership with these programmes and hope to return next year if requested.
Mick in Bogota Colombia doing a 5 day training with the staff at Formando Vidas and their Mercy Mission school. Steve Bartel made the theme of the week - Family care a better alternative to institutional care.
The participants at Chab Dai in Phnom Penh Cambodia with Mick and his wife Brenda (front right 2nd row). They had 3 days training in how foster care can be a more appropriate response for orphaned and abandoned children.
April 08 saw SFAC return to Tajikistan in Central Asia for the 3rd time to work with an International NGO – Helping Hand. Tajikistan is located north of Afghanistan and to the west of China. It is a small country with something like 93% of the country being mountainous, apparently some climbers practice here before going onto Mount Everest.
Tajikistan like other surrounding countries, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan were formerly occupied by the Soviet Union before becoming independent since the fall of communism. Russian and Tajik (Persian) are the national languages.
Mick was with the team at Helping Hand in order to work with them on recruiting and assessing potential foster carers. This organisation plans to implement a foster care programme later this year after they have selected and trained a small group of carers. They will be the first organisation in the Central Asian Region to develop foster care. As well as foster care Helping Hand also have other projects:
- Day crèche to enable local families to work during the day
- Back to school club for children who have been living on the streets
- Preparing young people to live independently
- A residential care unit for young people is closing down due to lack of funding
- Juvenile Justice working with young offenders – supported by UNICEF
Helping Hand has asked SFAC to return later this year to help with preparing to place children into foster families.
Below are 2 photographs - a group of children at crèche playing in the sand & some of the Helping Hand team doing group work.
January 2008 started off with a 2nd visit to the project Nadomak Sunca in the Istrian region of Croatia. The work there is progressing and have now carefully recruited 2 new families to care for the children in a small village called Orptalj. Odilia, project leader along with her team have worked hard to secure European Commission funding to develop the work and requested SFAC to continue further training in specialist foster care. Walter & Elaine Young (formerly directors of Team Fostering) plus Mick led 3 days of training concentrating on Valuing children’s origins, Safer Caring, Every Child Matters, Supporting foster carers and the role of men in foster care. Comments from the recipients were that as a result of the detailed information in the training they were able to move forward in the project with greater knowledge and understanding of foster care issues. They have requested that we continue to visit and train on specific issues that arise for them in the coming years.
If you would like to see what is happening at the children's home Casa Lar Novo Rumo in Sao Paulo Brazil, watch the video clip below. Hope you enjoy it.
SFAC’s visits abroad for this year drew to a close in November / December when Mick visited the Chab Dai coalition in Phnom Penh Cambodia then 2 weeks later a brief visit to a UK/German NGO called STEP in Kurdistan – Northern Iraq. Both of these trips were ‘firsts’ for SFAC but very appropriate and encouraging that foster care is seriously being considered in these countries. In Cambodia we saw that at least 3 organisations have already started a low key foster care programme and one organisation is working with children who are HIV+. Obviously finding the right families who can take that additional responsibility is not easy but they project manager is hopeful they will be found. In Iraq even amongst the continuing troubles the Kurdish Parliament struggle with having options available for children who are unable to live with their families and would love to see fostering develop.
In September SFAC had representatives in 2 countries, Diane & Arlene in Southern Asia in Nepal and Mick in Central Asia in Armenia. Diane writes from her return visit to Nepal; We hadn’t fully realised the significance of our previous visit to Nepal in 2005 had had such a profound effect on those who attended. One such person was Buddhi Man Shakya who has a BA and MA in social work, a degree in child psychology, was writing a book called “How to Promote Self Esteem in your Child”, and translated some of James Dobson’s books into Nepali. We first met him when he travelled on his motor bike from Kathmandu for the training we delivered in Pokhara in 2005. He then asked us to take the training to PCDM in Kathmandu. He is convinced that foster care is the “right method for Nepal”. His motto is “Better to build the child than to repair the adult”.
Mick travelled to Armenia where he worked with an established Church based NGO working with families and children in the city of Yerevan. (Word of Life Church, Armenia) They have already commenced fostering on a small scale and already see the benefits for the children compared to residential care and want to develop the work. Mick was able to talk with 2 foster carers; one is looking after a boy aged 4 and the other his sister aged 6. Both have older siblings and contact with them is considered beneficial but creates issues for everyone involved – no surprises there! The leaders of the team have already attended IFCO conferences (International Foster Care Organisation) and found that helpful gaining insight into foster care. They told Mick they think the training SFAC give is just as relevant from a practice based perspective giving access to more workers to learn about and understand better the many complex issues involved with foster care.
SFAC were invited to Central Asia to train projects already commencing foster care in both Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. Mick was in Khujand in the northern region of Tajikistan from 4th – 8th June training NGO workers at project ‘Helping Hand’ where he discovered they are at the cutting edge of social work development in that country. They already have 4 programmes:
1. Oasis rehabilitation centre
2. Back to school programme (employed teachers working with children)
3. Half way house (steps to independent living)
4. Juvenile Justice (programme supported by UNICEF)
Now they are on the verge of developing foster care programme and have located SFAC who have become their primary trainers in this area. Project leader Larisa has requested that SFAC provides annual training events to help them develop good and sustainable foster care programmes.
Some of the children who have come through Helping Hands projects
Travelling from Tajikistan Mick landed in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan before moving on 2 hours east to Balykchy only a few hours from the Western border with China. Project ‘Children of Tien Shan’ is run by Irina who Mick met in UK almost 2 years ago. At that time Irina was determined to pioneer foster care in her country and is doing that. Her project provides a day care centre for children from poor families and also working with birth families to improve their situation. Whilst there Mick was introduced to the Minister for Social Affairs for Kyrgyzstan Republic who just happened to be visiting Irina’s work. The following day Mick led an Advocacy day with local government workers, Government official and other NGO leaders attending. That day along with Irina’s drive to see foster care develop in Kyrgyzstan seems to have been a catalyst and she has now been co-opted into a group with Government lawyers and UNICEF to change Kyrgz child care laws to include foster care!
Mick with some of the children at Children of Tien Shan
In early May Mick had his annual trip to Brazil this time visiting North East Brazil, Joao Pessoa at the invitation of project ‘Proximo Passo’ (Next step) where he delivered 2 days training to participants from surrounding cities Recife & Fortaleza. He was also able to gives individual consultancy to project workers. He then travelled down to Sao Paulo training participants with project ‘ABBA’ in the region of Santo Amario. This is the third year Mick has done training there and some participants always attend saying they learn so much from the sessions.
28th & 29th April SFAC & Team Fostering gave a 2 day training programme to the Humanitarian Organisation ‘Nadomak Sunca’ in the village of Oprtalj, Northern Croatia. Their work focuses on providing a number of children with a substitute family in homes they have already purchased within the village. Previously they have had difficulties obtaining the right kind of families to look after the children (foster care) so wanted to benefit of SFAC & Team Fostering’s professional experience in recruiting new carers. Project manager Odilia writes “All participants were impressed by the clearness and effectiveness of the tools and methods presented. We learned very much in a short time. All situations and examples were easily recognisable. Sometimes, slight cultural differences could be noticed in the British approach, which can easily be adjusted to the Croatian situation. On the whole, we experienced the training in such a way, that to us a whole world was introduced, which was at the same time new and challenging and familiar and close to our own experience.
Because SFAC and Team Fostering promised to keep in touch with us for further questions and consultancy, we feel very optimistic and encouraged to introduce this new but essential tool in the Croatian world of foster care.
Mick, Walter & Elaine Young of Team Fostering in Croatia
SFAC training manual is now updated to include sections from Fostering Network’s – Skills to Foster. With their permissions we are allowed to include some of their material in SFAC training manual – Challenge to Care and use with organisations in developing countries that have gone through SFAC training.
February 07 saw a rapid turn around with Mick being in UK for 4 days after the Uganda trip before travelling to Colombia with Team Fostering Directors Walter & Elaine Young. SFAC had been invited to give 5 days training on foster care with an NGO in Bogota. ‘Fundacion Pacto Belen’ Director Walter Beltran had heard SFAC’s training in November 06 and believed that his project with ex street boys addicted to drugs was now at a major transitional stage. He realised that placing some of the boys into families through foster care was a real opportunity to give the boys a sense of ordinary family life, but knew they had to do the work professionally. He asked Mick to return as soon as possible to train his team and others in setting up a fostering programme and some of the mechanics to enable it to work.
January 07 saw SFAC’s first venture into Africa. Mr Andy Williams, CEO of Retrak, invited Mick Pease & John Ellerington to give a 4 day workshop in Kampala plus a press morning followed by an advocacy day on the benefits of foster care. 22 delegates attended the workshop from Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Kenya. The response was overwhelmingly supportive and positive with all representatives expressing their view that foster care can and should be operating in the continent of Africa. Retrak already have a foster care programme based in Kampala and believed the training was “much needed, beneficial and contextually appropriate for Africa”.
During that week Mick was interviewed by BBC World Service and have written an article on the web about Foster Care in Uganda with orphaned Aids children – click here to view it - there is a link to SFAC web site on that report.
