Conclusion
Increasingly, child protection advocates are calling for ethical and appropriate alternative care systems. This requires consideration of a child's natural resource system as well as the wider context, that is, supporting families and communities in a manner that is economically and socially relevant to local systems and culture (Rotabi et al.
2012; Roby et al. 2014). For example, in Uganda, ethical approaches to child care include a concerted effort to identify the misuse of the term “orphan” and the distortion of the system with the use of residential care institutions in a country with a strong history of family and community engagement in responding to the needs of vulnerable children (http://www.alternative-care-uganda.org/ resources/safe-campaign-brochure.pdf). Workforce training has commenced, underscoring the importance of family preservation, including means and methods consistent with best practices in social casework. Deinstitutionalizing children is now a policy goal in many impoverished countries (Williamson and Greenberg 2010), but they are up against an orphan industry that posits their institutions as good places for children - particularly for parents and guardians who see in them the opportunity to provide a decent education to their children at no cost to themselves (http://unitingforchildren.org/2014/06/changing-lives-in-uganda/).In the aftermath of Guatemala's intercountry adoption boom, bust, and ratification of the Hague Convention, systems for social care began to transform to support and preserve families in an effort to repair and reform a distorted child protection system (Rotabi et al. 2012). For example, in 2012 a group of 45 social workers and psychologists gathered in Guatemala City to be trained in family group conferencing (FGC) (Roby et al. 2014). This family support intervention brings the family together with their kin, along with friends and other close supporters of children who are at risk of out-of-home care, in an effort to prevent child institutionalization.
FGC brings these actors together to agree upon and implement a plan to safeguard vulnerable children and their families (Pennell and Anderson 2005).Family group conferencing, founded upon traditional practices common to many cultures, was first legislated in Aotearoa/New Zealand after a series of protests by indigenous Maori peoples against Eurocentric child welfare practices that undermined familial and tribal networks and unethically removed children from their families and communities (Pennell and Anderson 2005). In response, FGC was developed as a child rights-based social intervention that engaged the family and larger community while honoring and reinforcing cultural connections and community-government partnerships. FGC employs social workers, psychologists, and others trained in the methodology in the role of planning as they pull together a “family conference” to negotiate a family strategy for a vulnerable child (Pennell and Anderson 2005).
Training in family group conferencing was well received by Guatemalan social workers and psychologists, who reported that they were already engaging in similar practices (Roby et al. 2014); the training provided added tools and structure to their existing practices oriented toward family-based care. This training, taking place some 5 years after the intercountry adoption moratorium in Guatemala, is one example of capacity building to address the needs of vulnerable children and their families. FGC is a pro-family child welfare intervention, as opposed to previous approaches that pulled children into institutions as holding areas and then streamlined healthy “orphans” into intercountry adoption. FGC underscores the role of child protection professionals as agents of family support and preservation, resisting the influence of the international orphan industry (Rotabi et al. 2012; Roby et al. 2014).
Family group conferencing is presented here to illustrate evidence-based child protection practices that build upon the fact that most children are not “orphans”; rather, they have a social network of loved ones who will often respond to a child's needs when engaged appropriately.
It is a low-cost intervention with little utility for facilitating institutionalization and intercountry adoption. Instead, in most cases, it precludes such extreme measures, in compliance with international standards. Fundamentally, FGC builds upon organic family strengths, kinship and community processes, and aligned responses to vulnerability that were previously undermined by large sums of orphan industrial complex money. This example of FGC in a previously active intercountry adoption country illustrates the possible distortions of child protection systems and family life and the subsequent need to rebuild ethical approaches to family preservation.Hoping to avoid situations like those Guatemala experienced due to international adoption pressure, Uganda's Ministry of Gender, Labour, and Social Development's Alternative Care Initiative is spearheading a similar effort to improve family preservation and bolster local child welfare systems through cooperation with government and child protection experts. Their SAFe Campaign (“Strengthening African Families”) aims to bolster the existing child protection system by drawing attention to sound policies and legal frameworks that are already in place but which they have limited resources to enforce. Their hope is that the campaign will prompt those wishing to assist “orphans” to “Re-evaluate well-meaning activities that may unintentionally destabilise children and create more demand for institutionalised care” (http://www.alternative-care-uganda.org/way-forward.html). If they succeed, they may yet avert a family and child protection crisis. But “orphan addiction” lies on the demand side of the orphan industrial complex, so it is also imperative to continue to challenge the prevailing global “orphan rescue” myth that feeds that complex and causes structural violence against families and children.