In part 1, professor Bogin talked to us about his work in Guatemala, measuring the effects of toxic stress on young Maya children’s development. In the second part of his interview, he discusses the importance of one to one care for children’s development, and his own hopes for an end to orphanage use worldwide 

(AW) We often point out that over 100 years of evidence shows orphanages harm children.  What did you find when you looked at records spanning over 300 years on children in orphanages, children’s homes and institutions? 

(BB) That was actually a study published in the Journal of Physiological Anthropology. I cite the German paediatrician Piper, who did the survey in the 1950s. He showed that, starting in the 1700s, more than 90 to 100% of all the kids in the institutions died. 

So in 1955, they knew this. 

Even further back, I cite research on every baby under two years of age that went into the New York City Foundling Home. Some were abandoned, some were given up. That was in the 1920s, when these paediatricians (Dr. Chapin, Bakwin, and then in 1945 Dr. Spitz) wrote the most powerful indictment of these kinds of places.  Spitz coined the name ‘hospitalism’ for the syndrome that these kids under two years of age suffered. 

They were given food, their nappies were changed, but this picture shows the nurses. It looks like it’s COVID times. I mean, the nurses are in full gowns. The only skin showing is a little bit of their forehead and their arms. Their mouths are covered with masks. It wasn’t because the nurses did not care, they were not bad people, but rather they believed that covering up was good for sanitation. 

But, they could not engage with the infants. So almost all of them died.  That’s because they had really no love. Other photographs from around the same time, staged photographs showing the kids are all in wonderful starched clothing and they have little toys, but there’s only one, severe matron in the picture.  That one woman could not provide the love and care that the many orphans needed.

Evidence from Europe

And then there is a very famous study done by a British nutritionist, Professor Elsie Widdowson, who went to orphanages in Germany after World War II, in the British controlled territory. The [science of] nutrition was in its infancy after the war, but there was a lot of interest in it because of all the hunger during and after the war, all the food rationing etc.  They had lots of kids in orphanages and they experimented: they gave some kids an extra biscuit, an extra orange, and they gave other kids just the normal fare. 

And it turned out after six months, the kids with the extra biscuits and the orange didn’t grow, but the kids who were getting regular orphanage food were actually growing better. Prof Widdowson said “this can’t be right!”. So she switched orphanages.  She thought, well, maybe we did something wrong. So she gave the other kids who were growing well, the extra orange and extra biscuits, fortified with various nutrients. And lo and behold, at the end of the six months, again, the ones who were getting the intervention didn’t grow.  

Better a meal served with love 

But she found out what happened. 

The matron, who had been at the orphanage, delivering the intervention in the beginning, had changed orphanages. This matron beat the children. She punished the children at dinner time before they could eat. Well, you know what that does to every kid sitting in the dinner room. There’s no digestion. There’s no absorption. And that’s why the interventions didn’t work.  

And she quotes a passage from the Old Testament that “Better is a dinner of vegetables and herbs where love is present than a fattened ox served with hatred.” 

So all this stuff has been known. I’m not coming up with something really new, but you’d be surprised how many places have run the story of the press release from Loughborough University. And I was interviewed by a couple of newspapers and BBC, Leicester radio….it’s like people have forgotten. 

I forgot. I knew this stuff and I forgot it.  

Resetting the clock on severe deprivation

(AW) So how might an orphanage, or any setting where there’s an absence of one-to-one love and care, affect a child’s emotional development as well as their physical development? 

(BB) Well, kids who suffer chronic toxic stress have both physical and emotional and cognitive impairments. This is well known. Probably the best examples of this are a British study of British adoptees from the Romanian orphanages during the Ceausescu regime when so many kids were tied in their cots, totally neglected. 

The earlier those kids were adopted into families, the better they do, but all of them show residual effects as adults.  They have lower cognitive performance, they have physical growth deficiency, they’re small.  They’re not stunted, but when you look at them as a group, they’re shorter. And they have various kinds of cognitive impairments. 

Of course, these Romanian orphans were not just a bit neglected. They were severely deprived. 

So that’s what happens in severe deprivation and with less than severe deprivation, you get less severe impairments.  But you get them.  

The end of orphanages

(AW) Do you believe from your findings that orphanages should no longer be used globally? 

(BB) Absolutely. This is also very well known.  In rich countries, the old style orphanages like the New York city facility don’t exist. So kids are placed with families. It is super well known that placing them in the old-style orphanages is bad. So orphanages everywhere in the world should be disbanded.  

I have three children. My youngest was in an institution in China. I’m fully aware of how brutal it all is.  

China has given up, of course, on these [intercountry] adoptions. They say it’s because they’ve changed their one child only policy. That’s part of it. The other part of it is they realize how brutal the institutional system is. When we got our daughter, she was 14 months old, and she was on the 30th percentile for length. So, she was shorter than 70 percent of kids her age. Now she’s about at the 50th percentile – average height. So she also had her immediate growth spurt after being adopted. 

It wasn’t just physical growth, it was development. She wasn’t walking when we got her. She was about three, four months behind. But the Chinese basically put up for adoption girls they knew were going to be healthy. They often put the less healthy girls in the dying rooms at the orphanages. So once the directors of the orphanages sorted the girls out the ones that they didn’t think were worthy were just put into a room with doors closed. They just died of hunger and dehydration.  

Fortunately, that’s [no longer] done in China, but I’m sure that it’s still going on elsewhere. 

We’d like to extend our thanks to Professor Bogin for sharing his thoughts with us, and sharing in our commitment to transform child care so that every child can experience the love only families can provide.

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Thankfully, we’re glad to report that all the staff from our local partners Forget Me Not Nepal (FMN) and The Himalayan Innovative Society (THIS), based in Kathmandu and Western Nepal are safe. We’re also thankful to share that all the children and families we support – including those in Karnali Province, the area affected – are also safe. However, some houses where the children and families live are damaged.

We know that in emergencies, the risk of children ending up in orphanages always increases. As a result of Friday’s deadly earthquake, some children will tragically be grieving one or both parents. Destruction of homes and livelihoods means many mothers and fathers – some newly widowed – will be pushed deeper into poverty and increasingly worried about how to put food on the table. When families struggle to provide for their children, orphanages are mistakenly often seen as the solution, due to widespread misinformation that orphanages offer better alternative care for children.

Increased pressure on families

These sets of circumstances increase the pressure on struggling parents to send their children away to orphanages. They also increase the likelihood that children without parents, families or trusted adults to protect them will be exploited and trafficked into orphanages. Often this is so that the children can help elicit donations from well-meaning, but misinformed, tourists and donors – as we saw following the two devastating earthquakes in April and May 2015.

We cannot let this happen.

Every child has the right to grow up in a safe loving family, not shut away in orphanages.

What we’re doing in Nepal

With our support, our local partners in Nepal work to prevent children being wrongfully separated from their families and sent to orphanages, by

• working with the government to closely monitor and close orphanages
• raising awareness and sharing the truth about the harms of institutions
• supporting families at risk of separation

Now, with vulnerable children at risk following the earthquake, our work is more important than ever.

Crisis response

In particular, our partners will be responding to the earthquake in three areas: humanitarian support, counselling support, and prevention:

Humanitarian support: Our partners will now be working closely with the local authorities in Karnali Province to ensure that vulnerable children and families are provided with food, tents, clothes, blankets, and counseling services to calm their fears and give them hope.

Counselling support: Our team will be following up with families to provide in-person and remote support and guidance – recognising that the impact of the earthquake is both immediate but also that there are now higher long-term risks of traffickers luring families to send their children to orphanages in cities.

Preventing institutionalisation and child trafficking: Our Reintegration team are in close communication with Karnali provincial and local authorities in the earthquake-affected districts – Jajarkot and Rukkum – about the need to prevent institutionalisation and alert them about the risk of children being trafficked into institutions.

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The current news cycle is overwhelming. Over the past 20 months, we’ve witnessed a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine that shows no sign of abating. Millions of children are suffering the consequences of war. Yemen faces a famine, with unprecedented levels of hunger and one of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world. In Syria and Turkey, earthquakes have killed over 55,000. Millions more have lost their homes.

Then, shocking scenes from Israel, Gaza and the West Bank have horrified people around the world.

“The killing and maiming of children, abduction of children, attacks on hospitals and schools, and the denial of humanitarian access constitute grave violations of children’s rights”  

Adele Khodr, UNICEF Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, referencing the situation in the Gaza Strip specifically as “a growing stain on our collective conscience.”

We’ve added our voice to the global community’s calling for an urgent ceasefire by all parties in the conflict in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and an immediate and unconditional release of Israeli children taken hostage by Hamas

And now an earthquake in Nepal, where our teams are working with local authorities to support crisis response with food, tents, clothes, blankets, and counselling services to calm their fears and give them hope.

We can’t work everywhere that’s currently facing a humanitarian crisis.  But we do work globally through our advocacy for a better world for all children – free from the harm and safe from the fear they experience daily in orphanages. As part of this, we fight to implement our learning about how emergency preparedness and response should work hand in hand with care reform to keep the most vulnerable children safe.

Emergency Response – what we’ve learned

Thankfully, humanitarian actors are on the ground now, responding as fast as possible to these emergencies. But some disasters are predictable, and to build a truly fair world, we all need to prepare for them. We’ve learned here that disasters and emergencies always hit children particularly hard, and that children deprived of family support and care are especially vulnerable.

Whether it’s because they’re living in orphanages, or have become separated from their families, for example as refugees in the fog of war, without trusted, loving carers to protect and comfort them, unaccompanied children are at greatest risk of physical violence and abuse, psychological trauma, exploitation, and trafficking.

1. Prioritise the most vulnerable

All agencies working to respond to war and natural disasters must prioritise children without families. They’ll need  trusted adults to navigate their trauma. They’ll need practical help as they flee their homes and countries in fear for their lives.

2. Build focus on children without families into emergency preparation

Our work in Ukraine has shown us that the needs of children deprived of family care all too often are overlooked in emergencies, while the harm and trauma they suffer is irreversible.

As an international community of responders, we must account for their well-being and whereabouts, reunite them with their families when possible, or welcome them into supporting family environments urgently. And we must be ready with robust emergency preparedness mechanisms, explicitly designed to direct attention to children in alternative care, to limit as far as possible the harm to these children.

3. Don’t rely on orphanages as temporary response

In a crisis, for unaccompanied children and particularly children on the move, orphanages are often seen as a ‘temporary’ solution.  While well-intended, they become a long-term, established part of the care system. This locks up resources in buildings, rather than being directed towards keeping families and children together.

4. Prevention is the best cure

Ultimately, the most important thing that we’ve learned is that prevention of family separation and the strengthening of families and communities is the single most effective way of protecting children from experiencing emergency situations alone. We work directly with families and communities, and we continue to advocate for them globally, to ensure access to services in the community, and ensure that families have the financial and psychosocial support they need to keep their children at home. We continue this work so that one day, no child will have to face the horrors of war and disaster without the care of a trusted adult to support, guide and protect them.

Read our full recommendations on disaster resilience and child-centred response

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All too often, interconnecting factors like poverty, access to healthcare and education, and a misrepresentation of the orphanage system mean parents are unnecessarily separated from the children they love. Today, and every day, we support parents and fight to keep families together. Because children deserve families, never harmful orphanages.

Here are 3 incredible stories of love from parents worldwide, and the work we have done to support them.  

Fighting to keep their family together

Vasilica* was only four months old and his sister, Ecaterina*, was just one when they were sent to live in the orphanage. Vasilica was born prematurely with cerebral palsy. Poverty and discrimination made it very hard for his mum, Ana*, to care for him alone, without adequate support. 

The authorities thought both her children would be better off in an institution. But orphanages don’t protect children, they harm them. 

Ana battled for two years to bring her children home again. Through our local partners, CCF Moldova, we made sure she had the practical and emotional support that she needed to succeed. “I saw that Ana loved her children and she fought for them,” says Natalia, the experienced social worker who stood by her, every step of the way. 

In the orphanage, Vasilica spent long hours alone in a cot with no one to play with him, encourage him or love him. Today, reunited with his family, he’s a very active, much-loved little boy who likes building tall towers with his wooden blocks and playing chase with his sister.  

Read their story in full 

Creating a new family for Uwera*

One evening, Atete heard cries from the trees near her yard. There, she found Uwera, a newborn baby girl, abandoned on the ground. Atete scooped Uwera up, took her home and cared for her for three weeks while the community tried to find Uwera’s parents. Once it was clear that no trace could be found, the authorities insisted that Uwera must be taken to an orphanage. Atete was heartbroken. She knew that the last thing an orphanage would provide was the first thing that Uwera needed: someone to love her. 

For two years, Uwera struggled in terrible conditions in two different orphanages. She slept on the floor with insects crawling over her and she was fed just once every 24 hours. Shouted at if she made the slightest noise, Uwera stayed silent and struggled simply to survive. 

Luckily, following a new commitment by the Rwandan Government to end the use of orphanages, our specialist child protection team in Rwanda was able to work with their local authority partners to close the orphanage and give Uwera back her childhood, reuniting her with Atete. 

Uwera has been with her new family for 3 years now. Today, she’s walking and talking, running and jumping.  Atete’s older children love to play in their little home. Soon Uwera will begin nursery alongside the other children in her community, and Atete has applied to officially adopt her so that they’ll never be separated again. 

Read their story in full 

Rebuilding their family with love

One morning in 2013, Devi was travelling with her mother when their train stopped at a busy railway junction. Without telling her mum, Devi jumped down to fill up her water bottle. While her back was turned, the signal changed and their train pulled out, leaving Devi behind. 

For the next seven years, Devi was moved from institution to institution, but no effort was ever made to trace her relatives and reunite her with her family.  

In 2015, Devi was sent to live in a shelter for girls in the heart of Ranchi City, the capital of Jharkhand state. This is where she first met Neepa, a social worker with the development NGO, CINI. With support from Hope and Homes for Children, Neepa and her colleagues worked with Devi to recall details about her childhood, contacting local authorities and visiting station after station and asking local people if they knew of a child going missing seven years ago. Until, finally, they found her family again. 

When Devi’s father saw her again after seven long years, tears of joy rolled down his face. Sadly, Devi’s mother had never returned but her father now had a new partner and a son. Devi’s oldest sister lived with them too.  

The day that Devi officially rejoined her family was very moving for everyone. “Devi cried with emotion as she struggled to find the confidence she needed for the next stage of her extraordinary journey,” Neepa said. “Then she hugged her parents and smiled back at us as she stepped back into a life of love, affection and family care again at last,” she remembers. 

Read their story in full 

How we support families 

We keep families together, we reunite families, and we create new families. Family, children and parents are at the heart of everything we do. The three stories shared above show how our global teams work tirelessly to keep families together.  

We believe that a child is always better off as part of a strong, supported family. That’s why we’re working to close the doors of orphanages forever so that no child has to be separated from their parents and face the long-lasting harm orphanages cause.   

If you would like to donate to our work supporting loving parents and keeping families together, you can do so here. Thank you.

Donate now

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Richard Munyaneza, Communications and Advocacy Coordinator, Hope and Homes for Children, Rwanda.

When the pandemic started, everyone was afraid. One of our colleagues said, “There were families whose cases were about to be closed but due to COVID, have lost their economic status, and now they are kept under Hope and Homes for Children regular support.

Adapting to new ways of working whilst maintaining the quality of care needed by those we serve during COVID hasn’t always been easy. However, there have been some positive outcomes to this unpredictable pandemic.

No longer able to physically visit families, we intensified our phone calls and engaged actively in community structures, for example Friends of families, Community Health workers and the National Council for Persons with Disabilities committees. This turned out to be an effective way to carry out community monitoring and support the families under our care.

Before COVID, we had to obtain medication for families and children with disabilities and be the point of access for this. Now, due to COVID, we’ve been able to link families with medical facilities for them to access necessary medication directly.

The pandemic also added another layer of credibility to our work in Rwanda. Some families were very surprised to see us on the frontline continuing to support families, even during the worst lockdowns. One parent said:

“I thought that you were going to stop supporting us because of COVID. But seeing you continuing to call on us, provide food, and care for us, strengthened us.”

Even though COVID was very hard for everyone, it’s shown how we can be resilient as an organisation: adapting to the measures put into place to reduce the spread of COVID whilst effectively continuing to implement activities and services to vulnerable families and children.

India

Subhadeep Adhikary, Program Manager – Child Protection, Child in Need Institute (CINI), our partner in India.

As of 20th April 2022, official figures from the Indian Government and World Health Organisation (WHO), show India has the second-highest number of confirmed COVID cases in the world (after the USA) with 43,047,594 reported cases of infection and the third-highest number of COVID deaths (after the USA and Brazil) at 522,006 deaths. The impact on communities, families and children, many of whom were already extremely vulnerable before the pandemic started, has been significant. In our project areas in Jharkhand, we have seen many families plummet further into poverty, children’s physical and mental health negatively affected and an increased risk of children being trafficked and forced into child labour.

Many of our activities with the community were put on hold due to a government directive that restricted face-to-face meetings, community gatherings and supporting child care institutions in their transition. This meant we had to be more innovative in our approach to ensure we could continue supporting the community. We made full use of technology to provide remote support, health information, counselling, and monitoring through Whatsapp groups and other forms of mobile communication. Through our community workers we were able to keep linking families and children to necessary Government support services including health centres, sponsorship schemes and food programs.

We developed a COVID mobile ‘app’ which was rolled-out to all frontline workers in our project areas to identify and register children who were vulnerable to separation either due to losing a parent or falling into a desperate situation. Using this ‘app’ we were able to keep 60 children – who would otherwise have been exposed to trafficking, being institutionalised, or both – safe with a parent or caregiver.

As we emerge from the pandemic we will build on the innovations it has born to strengthen our work in communities.

Nepal

Anju Pun, Country Director, Forget Me Not, our partner in Nepal

On 31 March 2022 Nepal’s COVID count reached 978,4261 . The heavy rains in mid-October in addition to the pandemic impacted the lives of many with job losses and increase in food and fuel prices. To make things worse there is a growing fear of shortages in the coming months. Despite the challenges, we continued to support government’s deinstitutionalisation efforts and provided our support to the most vulnerable and marginalised children and families.

In January, we saw rising COVID cases. This variant caught most of our team members and our children in transitional care. Our 24 team members, 17 children under case management, and 1 parent of reunified children were infected with the Omicron variant. Luckily, everyone has fully recovered and is back to their normal life.

With Hope and Homes for Children’s support, we’re currently managing 74 cases of reunited children living in 16 districts with their families or in familybased alternative care. During the last 6 months (Oct 2021 – Mar 2022), our reintegration team made 102 in-person family monitoring and follow up visits; provided food support to 38 children and their families; made 420 remote phone calls; and provided education support to 52 children to ensure their well-being and safety.

We can see the resilience of children through the eyes of biological sisters Susheli (12) and Sabita (10). Every evening after school, the two light up their room with laughter and giggles, share their day with family, climb trees and huddle together to study. They were rescued from an abusive and illegal orphanage in Kathmandu and were reunited with their elder sister and brother-in-law in December 2020. This successful family re-integration is a beautiful example of what can be achieved when we provide family support and monitoring and join forces with local authorities.

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Tessa Boudrie, our Regional Director for Asia and chair of the BICON organising committee, shares the story of how this ambitious event came to be. She also shares the final report, which details the BICON committee’s 17 recommendations inspired by the conference. 

As chair of the BICON organising committee, it is my great pleasure to share with you the report of the 4th Biennial Conference on Alternative Care for Children in Asia (BICON 2021).  

When Dr. Modi of Udayan Care approached us at Hope and Homes for Children to get involved in organising the 4th BICON, we were delighted to do so and explore the opportunities to advance care reform in the region through BICON. Alongside 7 other partners, we put together a programme which highlighted promising practices, and showcased local solutions to challenges faced by countries across Asia. 

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic we sadly had to postpone the in-person conference, but this presented us with an opportunity to provide an online conference and potentially reach more people, both regionally and globally.  

Informed by the experts – children and young people

From the start we were clear that no conference on care reform could take place without the voices of the real experts – young people who have experienced care, and we were grateful to welcome a team of experts, who have guided us with much wisdom, grace and understanding. Key themes of the presentations and discussions included: 

• Tackling unnecessary separation, with a focus on family strengthening, disability inclusion, and prevention of separation measures for children on the move and in emergency contexts. 
• Family-based alternative care, including an examination of the need for and role of specialized foster care for children with disabilities and complex support needs, the central role of informal kinship care in ensuring family-based care, and the importance of developing and expanding community-based foster care services. 
• Quality care, which included a focus on what quality care looks like, its characteristics, and what it means and requires for governments and service providers to ensure all forms of care meet the characteristics of quality care. 
• Children with disabilities, which included a focus on tackling social attitudes and discrimination, inclusive approaches to care reform and deinstitutionalization and ensuring children with disabilities can reclaim their right to be part of family and community. 

• Social service workforce development, which took stock of trends in social welfare workforces across Asia, and examined community and cultural approaches to child protection and safeguarding, the role of community leaders and local level social service personnel in supporting children, and considerations for the social services workforce in supporting aftercare. 
• Perspectives of care experienced young people, which unpacked the challenges faced by young people leaving care in regions across Asia, including during the pandemic, the role of Care Leaver Networks, and the critical importance of addressing mental health issues faced by care experienced young people and ensuring adequate access to mental health services. 
• Global dimensions, which brought together the perspectives of youth researchers involved in the 2021 Day of General Discussion and global child protection specialists, and focused on listening to the voices of children and young people and working with them to implement recommendations and progress reforms. 

A key moment for care reform

BICON took place at a key moment in the global movement for care reform for children.  In September 2021, the Committee of the Rights of the Child at the United Nations hosted a Day of General Discussion  (DGD) focused on the rights of children in alternative care.  We were honoured to welcome 3 members of the UN CRC Committee as speakers at BICON, including Dr Rinchen Chophel who writes, 

“As the first major regional event following the DGD, the discussions and insights shared at BICON have started to address the “how”, providing direction on how we can and must move forward, both in Asia and globally. Now it is time to get crucial partners on board, including Asian governments, to effectively lead and redirect and expand resources and deliver systemic change. I look forward to working with the organizing committee, and most importantly the young people, to help make this a reality. “ 

Dr Rinchen Chophel, Director General SAIEVAC and Member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child & Focal Point for Asia. 

A partnership effort

We are so grateful for all the partners, supporters and participants who helped make BICON a success.    

What a journey it has been. We proudly can call this the start of a newly invigorated care reform movement in Asia. This report gives a flavour of the discussions and topics explored at BICON, outlining what governments and others need to do to bring about change. With millions of children in alternative care in Asia, we’re all motivated to carry on this work to support families and bring about meaningful care reform. Please join us.   

Read the BICON report and recommendations

Read the full report, and see the full recommendations and actions inspired by BICON below.

This report was initially intended for release on the 25th February, but due to the emergency in Ukraine its release has been delayed. Read how we are responding to the war in Ukraine, and find out how you can support our work.

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One fine morning in 2013, Devi was traveling with her mother when their train stopped at a busy railway junction. Without telling her mum, Devi jumped down to fill up her water bottle, while her back was turned, the signal changed and their train pulled out, leaving Devi behind. That moment is still etched on her memory.

“I was very scared and worried when I saw the train start to move. I shouted and ran to get on, but I couldn’t. I was crying and left with no choices. I felt lost in this world,” Devi remembers vividly.

With no idea what to do, Devi climbed on board the next departing train, little knowing it was headed in completely the wrong direction. Frightened and bewildered she approached a family with small children. At the next stop, they took Devi to the station master, who handed her over to the child protection authorities.

That was the moment Devi really got lost for good; in India’s vast orphanage system.

For the next seven years, Devi was moved from institution to institution, but no effort was ever made to trace her relatives and reunite her with her family. She was just one more child among so many, struggling to survive with no sense of who she was or where she belonged.

In 2015, Devi was sent to live in a shelter for girls in the heart of Ranchi city, the capital of Jharkhand state. This is where she first met Neepa, a social worker with the development NGO, CINI. With support from Hope and Homes for Children, Neepa and her colleagues are working to transform this institution into a short-term emergency care centre by finding long-term safe and loving family-based care for all the children currently living there.

“Devi was a very shy and anxious girl but she had somehow kept the light of hope alive and she let me know how desperate she was to get back to her mum.”

Neepa, social worker with our partners in India CINI

But seven years had passed since Devi had jumped down from that train. She was 14 years old and could remember very little about her past. “She could hardly remember her mother’s face”, Neepa recalls.

“Undaunted, they decided to retrace Devi’s journey with her, visiting station after station and asking local people if they knew of a child going missing seven years ago.”

With care and patience, Neepa encouraged Devi to tell her all she could remember and managed to piece together a picture of the last place she had lived. Devi’s parents had separated and Devi and her mum had been staying with her auntie, near a large railway junction on the line between Howrah and Mumbai.

“Devi told me their home was by a single track with houses of different sizes on both sides. But this was the only real clue we had to work with”, Neepa explains.

Neepa and her team checked with the local police and with the school authorities, but no record of Devi or her family could be found. Undaunted, they decided to retrace Devi’s journey with her, visiting station after station and asking local people if they knew of a child going missing seven years ago. But nothing clicked.

“It was nearly dark and we had almost given up hope when something about the place where we were standing struck me”

Neepa remembers, “Here there were similarities to the place that Devi had described, less crowded than the other stations, with mixed houses on either side of a single railway track. We walked on a few meters to speak with the local people and ask them if they remembered anything about Devi. Did anyone here recognise her picture?”

On one corner, a couple were making coal balls to sell for fuel. When Neepa showed them Devi’s childhood photo, the woman recognised her immediately! “She knew this child had gone missing and said she knew her relatives. It was an amazing moment for all of us and kept the ray of hope alive. That woman showed us the way to her village and introduced us to the people she believed were Devi’s family.”

“When Devi’s father saw her again after seven long years, tears of joy rolled down his face”

When Devi’s father saw her again after seven long years, tears of joy rolled down his face. Sadly, Devi’s mother had never returned but her father now had a new partner and a son. Devi’s oldest sister lived with them too. Neepa and her colleague, Rini, spent a long time talking to the family to try to see whether they would be able to welcome Devi back into their home.

“I’m really happy to be back home instead of in the orphanage because now I have love and a family to care for me”

The day that Devi officially rejoined her family was very moving for everyone. “Devi cried with emotion as she struggled to find the confidence she needed for the next stage of her extraordinary journey,” Neepa confirms. “Then she hugged her parents and smiled back at us as she stepped back into a life of love, affection and family care again at last,” she remembers.

Today, Devi is settling well into family life. She is enrolled in school and enjoying her studies. “I’m really happy to be back home instead of in the orphanage because now I have love and a family to care for me,” she told us recently. “I am free to go to different places, to markets or wedding celebrations. I am even learning our local language so I would say family is the best place for me.”

The post Finding family: Devi’s extraordinary Story appeared first on Hope and Homes for Children.

Maya was four years old when her parents made a difficult decision to admit her to Asha Orphanage in Chitwan District. “There was no good school in our village,” Buddhi explains. “Nani (daughter) did not want to go. We cried the whole night until dawn broke and it was time for her to go. We did not want her to but the situation was very difficult for us.”  

For seven long years Buddhi Maya had not seen her daughter, Maya, while she was in the orphanage. “Every night when I tucked my three daughters to sleep, I missed Maya and imagined her sleeping peacefully next to her sisters but the emptiness always made me cry.”  

In June 2021, Maya was removed from the orphanage with the collective help of the local, central authorities and our organisation and was reunited with her family. 

Buddhi, Maya’s mother remembers: “When Maya came home after such a long time, I did not know much about my own daughter. Sending my daughter away had made us strangers.”  With the help of our education and family support, today Maya is with her mother and sisters, which she had dreamed of for so long. 

Buddhi Maya said to Bina, our Reintegration Officer: “The support your organisation lit a sense of hope inside me that I can provide for my daughters no matter what struggles may arise.” 
 
From learning her ethnic language to sharing things as sisters, each day has been a learning experience for Maya. 

Buddhi Maya is now providing for her four daughters 

Today, their house is a happy place due to the loving bond between mother and her four daughters. Maya and her sisters are working hard in their studies and do the household work while their mother is in work. Buddhi Maya knows that what she earns is a minimum wage but she is willing to struggle endlessly to provide for her daughters.  

Her daughters understand the hardships their mother has been facing to provide for the family. “When you have daughters, they will have many necessities,” Buddhi Maya explains. “I have not been able to provide many necessary things but they understand when I say we will buy it next time.”  

Apart from her daily earnings, Buddhi Maya also looks after the tomato farm she cultivated in a leased land as a part of our income generation support.  

Continuing schooling during the pandemic 

Maya is currently studying in Grade 8. She has become more open and expressive about how she feels and what she aspires to be due to our regular follow-ups and support. Due to the pandemic, Maya and her sisters’ education is also affected. They cannot afford four separate mobile phones to continue online classes but they are managing from one mobile phone gifted by Maya’s paternal uncle. 

Buddhi Maya’s new-found courage 

 “Everyone makes mistakes,” Buddhi Maya says. ”My husband also made a mistake but he did not return even after our daughters pleaded with him in phone calls and messages. Now, my daughters tell me – you are both our father and mother and this has added so much courage inside me.” 

Her face lights up when she talks about Reintegration Officers Bina and Tenzin. “This office is like my family,” she explains. ”I know you cannot support us with everything. I will do all I can. Care is not just about giving money. The support I have received from you all always makes my heart happy and gives me courage. I pray your office helps other needy families as well. Dhanyabaad!” 

The post “We cried the whole night until dawn broke” appeared first on Hope and Homes for Children.

“Our world turned upside down. I had no idea how to support my family without my husband. There aren’t any nursery or childcare services available in my village. And on top of this, the schools were closed due to Covid, so Sonia was sent home from school.”

Radha, Sonia’s mum

Since schools closed, Sonia‘s education was suddenly cut short. With her mother out looking for work, Sonia spent long periods alone, at risk of being trafficked for child marriage, child labour or prostitution, never to see her family again. All while coming to terms with the traumatic loss of her father.

Unable to find work, in desperation, Radha considered making the heartbreaking decision to send Sonia to an orphanage, so she would at least get three meals a day. But decades of research show that orphanages don’t protect children, they harm them. To feel safe and happy, to learn, develop and really thrive, all children need to know that they are loved, and they belong; they need families.

But decades of research show that orphanages don’t protect children, they harm them.

Determined to prevent Sonia from ending up in an orphanage, our expert local partners, Child In Need Institute (CINI), stepped in and provided Radha with the support she needed to keep her family together. Thanks to funding and technical support from Hope and Homes for Children, CINI have trained community health volunteers in the area to identify vulnerable children at risk of ending up in loveless institutions. They have also developed a new mobile app called KoboCollect which rapidly speeds up the process of getting the right support to these families before it’s too late.

Preethi, a local community volunteer trained by CINI, soon identified Sonia as being vulnerable. “During one of our home visits,” Preethi says, “we found out that Sonia’s father had died of Covid, and that the whole family had come to a standstill. The family was facing financial crisis.” Thanks to CINI’s app, Preethi was able to support Sonia’s family quickly and efficiently. “We submitted all the family’s details and highlighted their case as a red flag, so the district administration was notified,” Preethi explains. “Then we presented the case to the district administration and successfully got support for Sonia’s education and got her mother onto the Widow’s Pension and Food Security schemes.”

Preethi also helped enrol Sonia in a free government residential school nearby. Here, Sonia will be well looked after while her mum is looking for work and can still see her family on the weekends and go home for the holidays.

Crucially, Preethi also provided emotional support, empathy, and hope. Sonia remembers, “The CINI team visited us and helped us believe that we could overcome our situation.”

Without the app developed by CINI, children like Sonia are falling through the cracks at an alarming rate. Your money is helping us use innovative digital technology to protect Covid orphans like Sonia from loveless institutions.
With Sonia back in a classroom and the family’s basic needs covered, Sonia is no longer at risk of being trafficked or sent to an orphanage and can stay with her family—where she belongs.

Sonia is loving being back at school. She feels positive about the future now and is able to enjoy playing with her friends again, and her three-year-old brother, Ajeet. She says, “I am very happy that now I can continue my education and live a happy life.”

The post Covid stole Sonia’s father. Then it nearly stole her childhood too. appeared first on Hope and Homes for Children.

The new strain of Covid hitting Asia is causing devastation and leaving countries in a state of emergency. In Nepal and India, the Covid situation is at its worst. We have worked with partners CINI in India and Forget Me Not in Nepal for several years, and are saddened to hear that some of our colleagues are infected or looking after family members suffering with the virus. We are extending our support to them during the pandemic. 

We are working to support our partners through immediate risks, and to address longer term problems.  

We know from our experience working in other countries across Europe and Africa, the majority of whom are still grappling with effects of the virus, that a crisis like this pandemic intensify the problems facing already vulnerable children and families.  Disruption to essential services like education or healthcare can expose weaknesses in child protection systems, leaving more children at heightened risk of being locked away in abusive orphanages, ending up on the streets alone, or falling victim to child marriage and sex trafficking.  

Here’s how we’re responding:

• We are ensuring that existing community child protection systems remain operational, to catch abuse or neglect, and support vulnerable children to stay safe  
• We are identifying the most vulnerable children and linking them with support services and temporary care in families if needed  
• We are continuing to provide direct emergency support to children and families at risk of separation, to ensure children can safely remain with their families 
• We are working with local governments and NGOs to combine efforts and streamline services to reach more communities 
• Alongside our partner in India, CINI, we’re setting up a Covid helpdesk so communities can receive health advice, guidance and access to various government support services 

If you are an organisation interested in supporting our long-term work to ensure children grow up in families in India, please contact us at mysupport@hopeandhomes.org 

If you want to support immediate crisis response efforts through our trusted partners CINI and Forget me Not, you can learn more and donate directly at:

India: Click here  

Nepal: Click here

Learn more about our work in India

Learn more about our work in Nepal

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