Children living with deafness and hearing impairment are 4 times more likely to suffer abuse than hearing children. One of the main reasons children living with deafness are so at risk, is that their specific communication needs are not addressed, especially sign language. This ultimately denies them access to education. It prevents them from being able to disclose harm and abuse. And it also means the ways in which they can maximise their own safety are not adequately communicated to them. This makes deafness a language problem, a communication challenge, rather than a disability. And society is not nearly enough concerned about it.

Redefining what it means to ‘listen’

Here in India, where I’m visiting some of our programmes, Ishaan*, 12, has very strong opinions on this.

“Everyone should learn how to sign …. it’s not my problem if they can’t, it’s their responsibility.”

I’ve just spent the day with Ishaan and some of his remarkable friends. They are all pushing back and demanding that society changes and adapts to include them, rather than them having to fight for their rights to protection, and their rights be able to participate in decisions which affect them. Because they are the experts on their own childhoods.

Over 1 million children at risk in West Bengal

Children living with the consequences of deafness are often not diagnosed until much later in their life, and so remain excluded and suffer the cruelty of stigma. The likelihood of being trafficked into the sex industry if you’re a girl, or into labour if you’re a boy, are much higher if you are deaf. Too often, the solution becomes part of the problem. If your parents have limited education and limited means, then the chances are high that you might be separated from them and taken into an orphanage.

And there, the process of institutionalisation will likely lead to further abuse, certainly neglect, and inflict lifelong consequences.

In fact, the traffickers are actively infiltrating orphanages, coercing children into them, then asking those children to send photos of friends. The traffickers use those photos to select and target other children, getting the children they’ve placed in the orphanages to persuade the targets to run away, into grievous exploitation.

There are only 200 certified India Sign language (ISL) interpreters registered here in West Bengal – a State that has a population of over 100 million people. Of that 100 million, approximately 2 million are deaf or hearing impaired, and more than half of them are children like Ishaan.

Working towards a better future

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Hope and Homes for Children has been working with our wonderful partner organisation, Children In Need Institute (CINI), since 2016. CINI has its own interpreters, offering frontline health and education services.

The World Health Organisation estimates that 60% of deafness is preventable. So if CINI can, through their health programmes,

• get on top of diseases like meningitis, which are key causes of deafness among children,
• and nail early diagnosis so that early interventions can mitigate the risks associated with deafness in early childhood,

then we could massively reduce the scale of the need.

And imagine if, through their education programmes, we could build the infrastructure and capability to make ISL as much a local language – used in homes and schools – just as Hindi or Bengali are. Hundreds of thousands of children would never know the trauma of being separated from their families and institutionalised or trafficked.

Realising every child’s potential

Because here’s the sweet spot: children living with the consequences of deafness can achieve the same educational outcomes as hearing children, if they have the right support. That means they can go on to college or university. It means they are more likely to find employment, and it certainly boosts their earning potential. It shifts the dial from dependency, isolation and exclusion, toward inclusion, socialisation and self-determination. These children will be happier and more productive, and the system would be less costly in the long run. Again, the World Health Organisation is clear:

• An annual additional investment of less than US$ 1.40 per person is needed to scale up ear and hearing care services globally.

• Over a 10-year period, this promises a return of nearly US$ 16 for every US dollar invested.¹

Children living with deafness should be enabled to communicate in their language of choice. Everyone benefits. This really is our responsibility. Not theirs. So if you can, please do donate to support the work of CINI and Hope and Homes for Children. You would be helping to transform the lives and futures of many, many children.

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/deafness-and-hearing-loss

*Names changed to protect identity

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Hope and Homes for Children’s Amelia Whyman caught up with Barry to find out more about his research.

Amelia Whyman (AW): Barry, having studied child development for decades, you’re a convert to children’s emotional wellbeing as a key factor in their overall health and development.  Can you tell us how that came about?

Prof Barry Bogin (BB): Well, I never really thought about the emotional side of things until quite recently. I was mostly convinced by the other ‘big shots’ of the day, that children’s development was [about] nutrition or infection.

Those are the first two things the World Health Organisation lists as affecting kids’ growth. The third thing is inadequate care. So essentially, they’re putting the blame on mothers or whoever’s taking care of the kids.

There’s nothing wrong with those things! Of course kids need food. And of course kids need good health. And of course kids need good care from other people.

But, the World Health Organisation says nothing about society. It’s all ‘the family’. 90% of all interventions that I’ve been involved with focus on a mother and her baby. And we don’t think about society at large.

Why are these people poor to begin with? Why are they marginalized to begin with? Why are they suffering? Why are they stressed out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? We don’t think about that. We just say, ‘if we sprinkle some nutrients on their food, or we give them a flush toilet, let’s see if that makes the kids healthier’.

Well, it doesn’t.

Good nutrition alone is not enough

That realisation came from analysis I did, with others, of nutritional interventions in low-income urban areas around the world; we found these nutritional interventions either have no effect, or their effect is smaller than possible measurement errors, or they actually had negative effect.

In other words, the kids who got the intervention at the end were shorter than the kids who didn’t get that. These are under 5s.

So several popular reviews have found that nutritional interventions or sanitation interventions have no effect on improving growth.

And that got me to say, well, what does?

Upstream factors

At that time, some other people were already talking about ‘upstream factors’ – the social, political and economic system of the society.

And I already knew this.  It was not a surprise, but I had never put two and two together. So, around eight years ago, finally, I did put two and two together.

I said, yes, it’s, it’s these upstream factors. It’s the love of the society. If a society doesn’t love its people, those people suffer. If the society is selfish and hoards resources for the few who are in power, and then if there’s violence on top of it, then the marginalized just suffer.

The chronic stress of suffering

As we know now, they suffer because they have chronic physiological stress and that stress produces hormones. We all get short term stress hormones, for example crossing the street in front of a bus, or if you’ve got a big exam next week. It’s good to have a stress response at that time; it will get your heart rate and blood pressure up, it diverts calories from elsewhere in your body to fighting or fleeing.  That’s fight or flight syndrome.

But, when you have chronic stress 24/7, when you’ve been exposed to stress before you were even born, because your mother’s been suffering chronic stress for decades, that blocks your own physical growth, brain development, cognitive development, your school performance – everything. Those stress hormones are antagonistic to growth hormones. The relationship is very clear.

Stunted growth

And not only do stress hormones block growth of the skeleton, they promote the storage of any extra calories as fat. And that’s what we see around the world today. In middle- and low-income countries, our kids suffer a very high prevalence of what’s called stunting. That’s a very short height for age.

Kids in orphanages, many of them are stunted because they just stop growing. As soon as they get out of the orphanage, one of the first things that social workers know is you’ve got to find new clothes, because they grow.

(AW). This is fascinating. From your own years of work, typically how long would you say it can take a child to recover, when love and hope are reintroduced into their life?

In kids under five, and maybe even up to nine or so, the effect is almost immediate; a month, perhaps six weeks.

So the power of love works very quick.

I worked in Guatemala for many years studying the growth of Maya (people native to Central America) school kids. Later on, I measured Maya boys and girls who were in the United States. I measured the kids in primary school, children between the ages of five and 12. And in 1992, I found that they were about 7cm taller than children the same age back in Guatemala, including their own brothers and sisters. In 2000 I remeasured a different group – same places, same schools – and they were 11cm taller. And not only were they 11cm taller, which is just amazing, they were taller than their own brothers and sisters who had been born or spent their early lives in Guatemala. So it wasn’t genetic. It was clearly something about life in the United States.

Now these families were still poor. Many of the parents were still undocumented. But most of the kids by 2000 had been born in the U.S. The law in the U.S. is if you’re born in the U.S., you’re a citizen. That’s it. So these kids were entitled to services that citizens get; breakfast and lunch at schools, and some health care. And of course, that helped nutrition and health status. But that explains maybe two, three, four centimetres.

So let’s say half of it is due to nutrition and healthcare. The other half is due to the lack of this chronic, toxic stress in their lives.

They weren’t afraid, their parents weren’t afraid, the mothers weren’t as afraid when they were pregnant. They could walk down the street, and they were just kids; they weren’t the target of a civil war. They weren’t the target of Guatemalan government genocide campaigns.

Stress takes a toll on everyone in society

But fear is still a problem for everybody in the country. That’s what I pointed out in another article I did before Love and Hope – Fear, Violence, and Stunting in Guatemala.

The children of the richest people in Guatemala have a stunting rate of 17%. It should be less than 2%. In a normal situation, some kids have to be short, some kids have to be tall – that’s just the way height is distributed – with a bell-shaped curve of heights, where most people are in the middle.

In other countries like Pakistan and India the richest families have over 20% stunting in under five-year-olds. That’s a sign that you can’t get away from it. If the society is corrupt and violent and mistreats the lowest 20% of the population, that also affects the wealthiest.

Because the wealthiest have to live in that country too.

Little kids in orphanages live with that kind of fear too. Maybe they’re not going to be kidnapped (like in Guatemala), but they can be physically abused, sexually abused.

————————

In the second part of our interview, Professor Bogin discusses how with the loss of our own orphanages, many higher income countries have forgotten the importance of one to one care for children’s development, and his own hopes for an end to orphanage use worldwide.

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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.

The post A journey towards lasting change appeared first on Hope and Homes for Children.

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.

“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

The post We stand With Those Affected by COVID in India and Nepal appeared first on Hope and Homes for Children.

At 16 years old, Munni is carrying a heavy weight on her young shoulders, but her younger brother, Dilip, can still make her laugh. Their father died a year ago and poverty forced their mother to remarry. Since then, Munni has been struggling to look after Dilip by herself. Until recently, she had dropped out of school and was taking whatever work she could find to make ends meet, but it wasn’t enough.

Soon Dilip dropped out of school, too. He was embarrassed to go without a proper uniform and they couldn’t afford to buy one. Munni was desperately worried about her brother. At just eleven years old, he was spending his days, roaming the village with nothing to do and she knew he was at risk of being sent to grow up at an orphanage with no one to love or protect him.

“We have worked with the local child protection committee to link Dilip to a sponsorship scheme that will provide him and Munni with a small income.”

But today, thanks to your support for our work, Munni and Dilip are still together and their future looks a little brighter. Through our local partners in the rural part of east India, Child in Need Institute (CINI), Hope and Homes for Children is working to help vulnerable children to stay with their families and in their communities. In this way we can stem the flow of children into orphanages that threaten their wellbeing and life chances.

We have persuaded Dilip to go back to school and given him the resources he needs to study. At the same time, we have worked with the local child protection committee to link Dilip to a sponsorship scheme that will provide him and Munni with a small income. Munni too is feeling more positive about the future. Our partners have arranged for a tutor to visit the village and work with her and some of the other teenage girls. This means she can continue her studies without having to risk walking 5km to the nearest secondary school on her own or worry about leaving Dilip by himself. Life is still tough, and their situation remains fragile, but Munni is confident that she can take care of her little brother now.

When we ask Dilip what he’d like to be when he grows up, he says he wants to be a policeman and catch thieves. But like most eleven-year-olds, he’s far more interested in the here and now than answering questions about the future. He doesn’t want to be rude but as soon as we’ve finished our talk, he slings his school bag in through the door and dashes off to play with his friends. Munni rolls her eyes and smiles.

The post Munni and Dilip’s story appeared first on Hope and Homes for Children.

“One day, I would like to be an engineer,” she says with a grin.

Yet just a few months ago, this would have been an impossible dream. Jacinta’s life then was about day to day survival, not planning for a bright future.

Jacinta’s mum died when she was born; her father left her with her grandparents and never came back. They did their best to care for her but now they are too old and frail to work. Jacinta was forced to leave school and earn what little she could, cleaning other people’s houses. This was a very dangerous time for her. With no one in her family able to support and protect her, Jacinta was at great risk of being exploited by her employers or trafficked as a domestic slave or sex worker to the Indian capital, Delhi.

Trafficking is so widespread in the rural part of Jharkhand State where Jacinta lives, that many parents feel that the only way to keep their girls safe is to send them to grow-up in orphanages. And this is not the only threat facing families here; extreme poverty, alcohol and drug abuse and the high number of second marriages, tear families apart and drive children through the orphanage gates.

But orphanages do not protect children; they harm them. Behind the high walls of an institution, Jacinta would be just one child among many, denied the love and individual attention she so desperately needs. She would be isolated from her community but still at risk of abuse and neglect from older children and staff; out of sight, out of mind.

Our prevention services: keeping families together

Today though, Jacinta and her grandparents have the support they need to stay together. Our local partners, CINI, helped to increase their household income by linking them with welfare and sponsorship schemes so that Jacinta can grow-up as part of a family and a community, not locked away in an orphanage.

And the Anandshala Child Friendly Space that we’ve helped to develop, close to her home, has given Jacinta the confidence she needs to focus on the future again. As a member of the Adolescent Group there, Jacinta meets and talks with girls her own age who understand her situation. With their support and encouragement, she has enrolled on the centre’s Bridge Course and now she spends her time catching up on her studies instead of scrubbing floors.

When we met Jacinta at the Anandshala, she’d put on her favourite dress to have her picture taken; a happy, confident little girl whose ambition to become an engineer now doesn’t seem such a distant dream at all.

‘There is no alternative to education,” she tells us, adding firmly, “If I am educated, I can do anything I want, I can be independent.’

The post “If I am educated, I can do anything” appeared first on Hope and Homes for Children.