Towards Deinstitutionalization

1. Towards Deinstitutionalization

2. Rationale • to guarantee the civil rights of all children; • to redefine child welfare intervention; • to modernized child welfare by providing adequate community services and social support to make desinstitutionalization possible; • to rehabilitate and resettle orphaned and abandoned children in society; • to bring about changes in the community to prevent the marginalization of orphaned and abandoned children

3. Steps • Adequate planning • Community and workforce education • Workforce evaluation • Community and workforce education • Pilot projects • Community and workforce education • Move to scale • Community and workforce education • Monitoring and Evaluation

4. Adequate Planning • Policy Framework • Funding • Workforce Preparation & Evaluation • Community Involvement • Contingencies • Implementation is site/community specific (one model does not fit all) • Development of local/community resources and supports • Community assessment • Community plan • Staff • Programs/services • Training & technical assistance

5. Community and workforce education • What is the message about institutionalization you want to convey to the community? • What is the best way to deliver the message to raise community consciousness? • Team of marketing professionals and social service professionals

6. Workforce evaluation • Economic and emotional barriers to de-institutionalization • Identification of the core competencies a foster parent should have • Plan for training staff working in institutions to another role in the child protection system

7. Community Involvement • Orphaned or abandoned children is not just a problem the court system, Ministry staff, social workers or psychologists; it is our problem as a community. • We need to band together and commit to the belief that no child should be raised in an institution. • We need community partnership; we can’t do it alone. • We can only succeed if the community is behind our efforts.

8. Pilot projects • Small scale and evaluate efforts. • Incremental changes; evolution and not revolution. • All change is threatening; pilot projects reduce the threat. • We learn from each experience. • Not everything we do will be right or work, so we need to pilot test our efforts.

9. Move to scale • Every community moves to scale differently. • Use pilot project to inform moving to scale • Challenges • Successes • Process of change

10. Monitoring and Evaluation • Evaluation plan must be developed from the beginning. • Tell us what works and doesn’t work. • Provides evidence to critics. • Must include qualitative and quantitative; best if it includes both standardized measures and measure developed specifically for project.

11. Triage/phase in • Infants & toddlers (under 5) without major special needs • Latency age children (6-12) • Teens (12+) & children with special needs

12. What to expect • Resistance • More problems then solutions • More things that go wrong then right

13. How to respond • Resistance—keep message & vision in the forefront • More problems then solutions—problem solve; learn from mistakes; be humble (a journey with an old map) • More things that go wrong then right—keep perspective; change is difficult; the outcome is right but the path might be difficult KEEP THE VISION

14. Simultaneous not sequential

15. Small Group Activity • Choose one of the steps • Develop a plan of how you would implement it in your community • Identify the barriers you are likely to encounter • Plan for how you would deal with each barrier