Boy looking out of window with painted Xmas ornaments Pristina,…

Boy looking out of window with painted Xmas ornaments Pristina, Kosovo

Family-based care at SOS Children’s Villages

An increasing number of children worldwide are in need of alternative care solutions. Although accurate figures are not available, it is estimated that one million children were orphaned over the past decade as a result of wars. Some 14 million children have lost one or both parents to HIV/Aids with the figure expected to rise to 25 million by 2010. Furthermore, a growing number of children have lost the care of their families for reasons ranging from natural disasters to personal tragedies.

Montenegro.

Every individual child

In view of the mounting numbers of children lacking adequate parental care, countries across the globe are in need of a wide range of suitable alternative child care options, which must respect the needs and rights of the individual child. A variety of solutions is necessary because many of these children cannot rely on their extended families for long-term care, nor is adoption or foster family care possible for all. Family-based care, as provided by SOS Children’s Villages, is a suitable solution for children without such alternative safety nets.

According to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the family is the fundamental group within a society that provides the natural environment for the growth and well-being of children. When a child loses its biological family the best possible alternative is care that is family-based. A family is a living community consisting of people of different generations who are related to each other biologically, legally or socially, and in which every member takes a unique position. Families are not isolated but are embedded in within a wider community that is also essential for a child’s development.

Since its beginnings in 1949, SOS Children’s Villages has pioneered alternative forms of family-based child care that are, today, widely taken for granted. The organisation’s child care model respects the needs and rights of the individual child within a family setting, promoting the child’s talents and development while taking his or her cultural background and national community into consideration.

The family: foundation for life

SOS Children’s Villages provides a long-term family-based environment by providing each child with a family house, where girls and boys of different ages grow up together with a parent, who is a child care professional with whom the children can form a resilient, reliable and unique relationship. For social, cultural and legal reasons, most SOS parents today are women although the profession has been opened to married couples and men in many countries. Family-based care at SOS Children’s Villages also provides quality training for all its carers as well as a professionally organised network of support on which they can rely.

Within their own houses, SOS families can autonomously organise themselves as biological families do, and experience a sense of safety and belonging while sharing responsibilities. Ten to fifteen such families live within an SOS Children’s Village in an environment of a manageable size that is based on solidarity, while simultaneously living openly and homogeneously with the surrounding neighbourhood.

At SOS Children’s Villages, biological siblings are not separated and continuous contact is kept with the child’s biological family whenever possible. Careful attention is, therefore, required at the admissions process, in which the child’s individual history and background are evaluated, in order to ensure the child’s personal requirements are properly met. The ultimate goal of family-based care at SOS Children’s Villages is to ensure the social, cultural and economic integration of the children in its care.