Building systems that protect and support families before they break apart

The UK government’s contribution in launching the Global Campaign for Care Reform reflects growing momentum to shift away from institutional care toward family-centred solutions.

At SOS Children’s Villages, after seven decades of working with children who have lost or are at risk of losing parental care, we’ve learned that deinstitutionalisation goes beyond closing orphanages. It’s about strengthening families, communities and entire child protection and social care systems. This helps these elements to work together to support children and families, preventing the need for alternative care in the first place. 

Stopping separation: keeping families together

In 2009, with our support, the UN adopted new guidelines for alternative care. These emphasised that children should only enter care if absolutely necessary and must always have the opportunity to return to their original families if it is in their best interest.  

At the same time, SOS Children’s Villages undertook a full review of how many children in our care had surviving parents or close relatives. For example, in the Lusaka SOS Children’s Village in Zambia, we found that 38% of children had a surviving parent. Several others had close relatives they had a relationship with, and many children had ended up in alternative care due to a variety of external pressures on their families, often alongside poverty.

Globally, research shows that 8 in 10 children in care have one or both parents alive. That is a devastating statistic millions of children are separated from their families unnecessarily, and often against their best interests.

Parenting is hard at the best of times. But when families have to operate under immense strain from issues such as war, extreme poverty, social stigma or health issues, it can become an overwhelming struggle to provide care for their children. 

The development of family strengthening programmes is helping us to support families to care for their children. This is preventing family separation and reducing the need for existing alternative care solutions. Our holistic approach includes parenting support, women’s economic empowerment, mental health and counselling services and connects families to essential services, such as WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene), nutrition, healthcare and education.  

The reason this works so well at preventing child-family separation is because we address the needs of each family and each child, within their specific context. When there are no viable options except alternative care, wherever possible we explore opportunities for family-based, kinship or foster care within that child’s community. But in many places, foster systems don’t yet exist  or they are under-resourced without enough social workers to ensure a child’s safety and wellbeing.

That’s where our role becomes two-fold: directly providing family-like care where there are no other options, and helping governments and communities make safe, supported family-based care more widely available.

A gradual and locally-rooted approach to transitioning to family-based care

Changing the way things work comes with challenges. Institutions cannot be safely shut down without alternative systems in place, as this risks creating new vulnerabilities and leaving children who have left these institutions in limbo. And in many countries, there isn’t yet accurate data on how many children are in alternative care, particularly in informal arrangements. Without this, planning for safe transitions that leave no children behind becomes guesswork.

That’s why effective care reform must be gradual, well-resourced and rooted in local realities. That means investing in the recruitment and training of foster families, in building a competent and supported social care workforce, and in strengthening national and community-based child protection systems.

And we must listen to children themselves. Those with lived experience of care must be involved in shaping the systems that serve them. Reform that ignores care-experienced young people is not just incomplete, it is more likely to fail.

Mental health support is essential

Children in care, especially those who have experienced separation or trauma, often face significant mental health challenges. This makes mental health services and trauma-informed care crucial. This must be embedded in family-based care – it cannot be an optional extra.

If children are moved from foster family to foster family when challenges arise, this undermines a child’s need for secure attachment, nurturing relationships and stability. By training carers on mental health, and supporting them and the children they care for, children and their carers can better connect with each other and sustain family-based care arrangements. 

Care reform beyond institutional closures

Care reform must go beyond institutional closures. It requires establishing a trauma‑informed, broad spectrum of family‑based care, including kinship, foster care and small‑scale family settings. Success depends on investing in a skilled workforce across social services, education, health and justice sectors, and equipping it with standardised gatekeeping and case management systems.

Investing in keeping families together and in family-based care systems isn’t just the right thing to do morally, it’s the smart thing to do economically. Family-based care is more cost-effective in the long run and delivers better outcomes for children and society.

But there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the complex situation of children without adequate parental care. Every country and every community must find its own path: informed by local data, grounded in evidence and shaped by local realities, while remaining centred on children’s rights.

What works in one context might not work in another. That’s why SOS Children’s Villages works to support governments with research, policy guidance and on-the-ground expertise to create systemic change that lasts.

Find out more about the Launch of the Global Charter on Children’s Care Reform – SOS Children’s Villages including the Position paper: Realising every child’s right to family care Report.