Alternative Care
In Ghana, UNICEF works with partners to ensure that children receive the love and support they need
Challenge
In Ghana, about 17 per cent of children do not live with either of their biological parents and so are often denied family care, parental guidance and support. Efforts have been made in recent years to reduce the number of children in formal institutional care and to ensure that foster and adoption processes are transparent and robust.
For every child, support
However, there is an inadequate follow-up system to ensure that the children placed in alternative care or institutions are well taken care of. Furthermore, close to 4,000 children live in children’s residential homes, mainly privately owned and run, when about 80 per cent of these children are not orphans and have at least one parent who is alive, according to data from the Department of Social Welfare.
Solution
UNICEF is working with the Department of Social Welfare of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, to reduce the number of girls and boys living in residential homes in eight districts. It also supported the development and implementation of a monitoring system and a database of children in residential care in four regions.
New materials are being used to equip community facilitators from government and selected NGOs to enable them start dialogues on family care for vulnerable children.