Alternative care In Brief
In Mozambique, too many children grow up without the care of their families.
WHAT CHILDREN ARE FACING IN MOZAMBIQUE
In Mozambique, too many children grow up without the care of their families. Poverty, violence and conflict often separate children from their families. An estimated 9,000 children have been separated due to the ongoing conflict in the northern province of Cabo Delgado. Around 800,000 children have lost their parents to HIV and AIDS related illnesses. Some children end up living in households headed by other children, while others may live with part of their extended family. Some parents and caregivers do not always have the capacity to provide appropriate care and support to the diverse needs of their children.
Orphans and vulnerable children are often moved temporarily or permanently into institutional care. These children consistently present poorer outcomes compared with their peers raised in a family setting. Living in institutions can produce long-term effects on children’s cognitive, physical, intellectual and social-emotional development. More than 70 per cent of these children do not have an integration plan so they can transition to alternative care, including guardianship, foster care or adoption. On average, children in institutional care spend more than six years there.
CHALLENGES TO REFORM
The sheer scale of the children who need help and the complexity of the issue are significant barriers to reforming the existing systems, but there are many more.
- Invisibility to the system of many children who need alternative care, because they are not registered, not accessing other social services or do not live where authorities can find them.
- The capacity of the social welfare workforce to provide effective case management is very limited across the country and there are no national programmes for temporary family-based care.
- Inadequate monitoring of institutions, masking the scale of the problems children face in institutional care.
- There are no family separation prevention programmes and no parenting support programmes to address poverty-related causes of separation, such as lack of education, food and clothing.
- Sufficient social protection programmes are not in place to help households that may otherwise be willing and able to provide alternative care to children in need. Similarly, there are no social protection programmes to assist children who head households, placing them in a situation of extreme vulnerability.
UNICEF ACTION
What has UNICEF been doing?
UNICEF has worked with the Government to develop guidelines and tools for the National Registry of Alternative Care (NRAC). The NRAC will monitor and match children in need of alternative care with foster families using new data collection tools. UNICEF conducted a feasibility study for the digitalization of NRAC, in collaboration with the Government. This electronic system was piloted in Maputo with UNICEF support. Children placed in family-based foster care has risen from 414 in 2022 to 658 in 2023. National implementation is expected in 2025.
UNICEF’s programme for childcare reform with the Government of Mozambique has three pillars of action.
- Pillar One: Preventing family separation.
UNICEF is supporting a Cash and Care Programme to prevent family separation, which is targeting 100,000 children 0-2 years old and their families across the country. Prevention is a critical component of UNICEF’s work to address the challenges of care for children made vulnerable by poverty and violence. Supporting families with a source of income, as well as follow-up from community workers, helps them to remain safe, stable places for children.
- Pillar Two: Strengthening information systems.
UNICEF is working with the Government on a nationwide data management system to strengthen and expand family and community-based alternative care options for children without parental care. The system will record both children in need of alternative care, as well as foster, guardian and adoptive families. Once operational, with foster, guardian or adoptive parents carefully selected, it will match children in need of safe, protective, caring and supportive family care. This will be a game changer in the lives of children in need of alternative care and represents one of the most critical steps for a real change in the country.
- Pillar Three: Improving service delivery.
UNICEF is working on safe and sustainable transition of institutionalized, unaccompanied and/or separated children to family and community-based care. This pillar includes children in humanitarian contexts, ensuring that they receive mental health and psychosocial support. UNICEF works with the Government to formalize alternative family care arrangements for children living away from their parents. Foster, adoptive or guardian families are screened and trained and children are regularly monitored. These arrangements can be formal, informal, temporary or permanent. In the best interest of the child, UNICEF advocates for formalized family-based alternative care arrangements, with residential care the option of very last resort.
