With the introduction of the Care Reform Initiative (CRI) in 2007 by the Department of Social Development (DSD), there has been a shift from emphasizing institutionalized care for orphans to reintegration of orphans into their extended families. The Care Reform Initiative which is a new approach to care services for vulnerable children is based on the findings of recent global research which suggests that children thrive better in family environments and that a child’s general development and safety is often affected when he or she grows up in a child care institution such as an orphanage.
In the light of this new development, the Government of Ghana, through the Department of Social Development of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has placed a ban on the issuance of new licenses for the establishment of new children’s homes or orphanages. Orphanages that fall short of the standards of maintaining or running an orphanage (as determined by the Department of Social Development) are being closed down and the orphans transferred to other orphanages or reintegrated into their extended families. By the middle of 2015, the department had closed down 84 homes and reunited 2, 248 children with their biological parents.
The Child and Family Welfare Policy of 2015 also seeks to ensure that the child is maintained within his or her family as much as possible and only suggests removal of a child in case of immediate danger or if negotiated solution among all concerned parties cannot be agreed. As such, orphanages across the country are being urged to where possible reintegrate the orphans in their care into their extended families. Institutionalization is only to be considered as a last resort where all avenues to reunite orphans with and reintegrate them into their extended families has been exhausted. Some orphanages have begun to comply with this new directive and have successfully reintegrated some of the orphans in their care into their extended families. Some well-endowed orphanages like the SOS Children’s Villages have introduced Family Strengthening Programmes, a programme directed at strengthening family units through economic and social empowerment as a means of assisting them to provide care for orphans and vulnerable children in their care. Through this programme, foster parents are given social grants to cater for the educational and feeding expenses of the orphans and vulnerable children in their care. Female foster parents who lack employable skills are taken through vocational training as a means of empowering them to acquire employable skills to aid them to become economically self-sufficient so they can sufficiently cater for their foster children.
As much as the new initiative to integrate orphans into their extended families is a laudable idea, there are bottle necks in this new design which raises concerns and problems worth discussing and finding solutions to. The following are some of the prevailing problems in foster and institutionalized child care in Ghana:
1. There are a lot of illegally run orphanages in Ghana with the number of such orphanages unknown. The safety and well-being of the children in these orphanages cannot be guaranteed.
2. Most orphanages that are sub-standard per the standards prescribed by the Department of Social Development are still being run and have failed to upgrade their facilities or have escaped closure by the department.
3. Some orphanages are “fake” and are actually being run as a business by their founders or owners. As such, most of the children in these orphanages are not real orphans but are children whose parents are alive. The orphanage owners enter an agreement with the parents of the so-called orphans to allow them to stay in their orphanages so they could receive better educational care. Other parents also give out their children to such orphanage owners so they would receive payment for “lending” out their children. This is child exploitation as the parents receive financial gain at the expense of their children.
Donations received by such orphanages are usually unaccounted for and are diverted into the pockets of these business-oriented orphanage owners. Children in such cover-up orphanages are at risk of various forms of abuse. Some may undergo starvation, neglect, child labour, and sexual abuse or even die.
4. The Department of Social Development lacks the capacity to efficiently supervise all existing orphanages in Ghana including the illegally-run ones. Supervisory roles by the department can at best be described as poor. This can be attributed to the lack of social workers in the department. In other words, the department is understaffed.
The recent work of investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas in 2015 brought to light the grave abuses that took place at the Countryside Children’s Welfare Home, a popular orphanage at Awutu Bawjiase in the Central Region of Ghana. It is worrying to note that the abuses that took place at the above named orphanage was not discovered by social workers from the Department of Social Development but by an undercover journalist who spent six months in the home as a volunteer. This shows how poorly equipped the department is in supervising existing orphanages in Ghana.
5. For one reason or the other, some orphanages are unwilling to comply with the recommendation of the Care Reform Initiative (CRI) to reintegrate orphans into their extended families as some of the orphanage owners have ways of benefitting from donations received from individuals, philanthropists, religious, local and international organizations.
The above discussed problems in foster and institutionalized care for children in Ghana can best be solved by strengthening supervision of all existing orphanages in Ghana (both legal and illegally run orphanages) and orphans and vulnerable children who have been reunited with and are undergoing reintegration into their extended families.
The Department of Social Development needs to come out with a broad programme that will help them effectively track new orphanages that are being set up without authorization in the various districts and municipalities across the country. The department could collaborate or team up with state institutions like the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) and the Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service, human rights and child-centred NGOs, local government officials like the Assembly men/women and traditional leaders like the chiefs and queen mothers to help track these illegal orphanages. I believe this approach will yield fruitful results and go a long way to help curb this problem.
The Department of Social Development needs to build the capacity of its social workers through training programmes and workshops so they can effectively carry out the mandate of the department which includes the supervision of child care. Also, the department needs to consider hiring more social workers to help make their work easier and make the department more efficient in its child care supervision mandate. This will also help solve the problem of understaffing in the department.
Follow-up visits on orphans and vulnerable children who have been reunited with their extended families need to be strengthened and given serious attention to find out how they are coping in their new environment and also to investigate and address the possibility of abuse and neglect.
These follow-ups should be carried out by social workers of both the Department of Social Development and the orphanages that carried out the reintegration exercise if those orphanages have social workers. A major cause of ineffective follow-up is the lack of funds for transportation costs. With such funds unavailable, social workers can do little to ensure that follow-up is carried out as it should.
The author is a Social Worker with African Development Programme (ADP)