Children in Alternative Parental Care
The family is the fundamental building block of society, and efforts aimed toward the maintenance of its well-being are critical to building a world where all children are given the opportunity to flourish and achieve their potential.
- فارسي، فارسي
- English
The issue faced
Family cohesion may break down for a variety of reasons, from displacement to a range of endogenous challenges (e.g. poverty, drug abuse, domestic violence, parental neglect). In cases where reuniting a child with family members is not feasible, quality alternative care should be provided.
In 2022, over 26,000 children in Iran lacking effective caregivers were placed in alternative parental care settings, with some of the common reasons for placement being the divorce of the child’s parents and parental links with activities related to drugs and/or crime. Of those children placed in such alternative care settings, 70 per cent were placed in family-based care/kinship settings (17,655), with the remaining 8,328 children being housed across 637 different institutions.
In line with global standards on moving from institutional placement to family-based care settings, a locally adapted alternative care model should include family empowerment services, alternative care settings and quality social services. In all cases, caregivers should adopt a holistic approach to the child’s health, nutrition, and physical and mental development, including through aftercare and community reintegration.
The actions taken
UNICEF is supporting the State Welfare Organization as the main governmental body responsible for providing quality care and support to children who do not have an effective caregiver, in residential and family-based foster care settings. UNICEF support in this area includes:
- Strengthening capacity among social service workforce.
- Assisting in the establishment of a locally adapted foster care model for children lacking an effective caregiver, in line with the overall goal of promoting family-based care settings and reducing the level of institutionalization of children.
- Supporting aftercare and social reintegration of children in alternative care through adolescent development and empowerment programmes, with a focus on social interaction skills components.
The partners engaged
UNICEF partners involved in implementation of the programme in this focus area include the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare and the State Welfare Organization.
The impact sought
UNICEF support to the Government of Iran aims to contribute to strengthening national child protection policies, systems, and programmes to ensure that integrity of the family is preserved through family empowerment, and that children in alternative care can live in a supportive and caring environment that provides them with the opportunity to reach their full potential.
Monitoring and Accountability
In adherence to principles of accountability, UNICEF enriches its programme designs and adaptations through systematic assessment and monitoring of the child’s rights deprivations, operating environment, partnerships and progress towards planned results. The implementation of Harmonised Approach to Cash Transfers (HACT) ensures both financial and programmatic compliance through a combination of micro and macro assessments, spot checks, audits and programmatic visits. Leveraging sophisticated and integrated enterprise platforms and tools, UNICEF maintains a consistent monitoring of its programme implementation assessing quality and coverage, identifying risks and challenges, highlighting best practices and lessons learned, fostering stakeholder participation and engagement and conducting end user monitoring of supplies. Additionally, UNICEF remains committed to its costed evaluation plan which includes external evaluations of its projects, partnerships, and/or strategies primarily aiming to enhance relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact, and sustainability of its programmes.