On the 1st and 2nd of March, the Second International Congress for Residential Care Centers took place in Peru. It revolved around the expected results of the 22nd issue of the National Plan of Action for Children 2012 – 2021: “Children and adolescents who join a family”. The meeting was organised by Claudia León, Director of Buckner Peru and member of the RELAF Latin American Consultative Council, and by the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations. 

Over 300 people attended the Congress, including Marisol Espinosa, Vice-president of the country. RELAF was represented by Daniel Moreira and Leticia Rodríguez, from the Latin American Consultative Council.

During the first day, persons from different countries of the region made presentations (Daniel Moreira, Leticia Rodríguez, Beatriz Becerra, Gabriela Schreiner and Alejandro Cusianovich) and panels were held with the participation of representatives from UNICEF, the Public Ministry, the Ombudsman’s Office, INABIF and the civil society. On the second day, working roundtables were held to discuss issues such as foster care, family reintegration, intervention methodologies, temporality of institutionalisation and interinstitutional agreements. Within this framework, the participants debated, exchanged their opinions and expressed proposals that were heard by the authorities, who made several commitments.

The Congress provided an important opportunity to debate and reflect on children, family and alternative care. Among the topics discussed and that should be worked on in the short term were the importance of standards for foster care as a protective measure, the creation of more foster care programmes, the modification of the Law on Adoption (currently in progress), the promptness in the deadlines for the adoption, the adoption of older children, and the creation of specialised technical teams to work with both foster families and families of origin.

The Congress showed the increasingly growing interest in the care of children and made it possible to get to know the issues to be improved.

To know more about this and other initiatives by Buckner Peru, please visit http://www.bucknerperu.org/

During November, the First International Congress aimed at professionals from the Residential Attention Centres entitled ““Quality interventions in Residential Attention Centres” was held in Lima, Peru. The event was organised by the Ministry of Women and Social Development (MIMDES), the Office of the Vice-president, Marisol Espinoza, and Buckner Peru, and took place at the Republic’s Congress, in room Raúl Porras Barrenechea.

Matilde Luna took part in the Congress in her role as an expert in children deprived of parental care and in the provision of alternative care. Other members of RELAF also joined, such as Judith Aude from Uruguay and Ivania Ferronato and Gabriela Shreiner from Brazil.

The event had the presence and support of the country’s Vice-president, with whom RELAF held a meeting. At RELAF, we think that the current situation in Peru presents a great opportunity for the local actors, who, now with support from the Vice-president, can project new plans and reforms in a country with serious issues to be resolved with regard to institutionalised children. RELAF supports and promotes these changes and, just like in 2011, will work on the field anywhere the country requires it during the next year.

The foster care programme managed by Inabif and Buckner Peru was presented at the First Congress of Professional Social Workers, organised by the University Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The panel on the presentation of the experience was in charge of two members of the technical team: Rosa Moquillaza Aparcana (Psychologist) and Milagros Espinoza Bazán (Social Worker), who were accompanied by Matilde Luna, who participated as a special guest making an introduction on the subject.

The professionals transmitted the experience of their work in this pilot programme and presented its guiding principles and the procedures of intervention that they carry out in relation with the call for, recruitment, training and monitoring of the foster families, as well as the inter-disciplinary work they maintain with the fostered child’s family of origin with the aim to rebuild and strengthen their bonds. The presentation was complemented by a video showing the testimonies of the children in foster care. These spheres of academic training are relevant spaces for the diffusion of the programme and the transmission of a human rights approach in the practices that aim to guarantee the right to community- and family-based care, such as foster care.

RELAF carried out a working meeting at the office of Inabif’s foster care programme. Matilde Luna, María Sánchez Brizuela and Federico Kapustianky held a meeting with programme coordinator Graciela Azaña and her technical team. The team reviewed the advances of the program and the life stories of the children involved, identified the obstacles that are still present and explored the new challenges of this experience together with RELAF.

This pilot programme is innovative in Peru, and although the number of children involved is very small, it is very noteworthy since it develops a very careful experience with an appropriate, family-based approach in the context of an overwhelming number of children living in institutions (“Homes” -see article on the Home “La Sagrada familia”).

Currently, the program provides 32 children and adolescents with family-based alternative care. Most of the children come from the residential assistance centers as the programme was designed to achieve their deinstitutionalisation, but currently the programme can respond to concrete cases to prevent institutionalisation.

The job the team carries out in order to achieve the reconnection of the children with their families of origin is relevant. Since most children come from long stays at the residential assistance centers, in many cases the bonds have been weakened or broken. In this sense, it is important to highlight the achievements obtained, since there are children that have left the program when reconnecting with their families of origin or their extended families. The context of poverty and the lack of public policies that support the families sometimes delay the reintegration and are of worry to the working team, which works based on the strong conviction that poverty cannot be the cause for an unnecessary separation.

RELAF made recommendations in two directions. On one side, the necessity of the programme to start providing children under the age of three with family-based alternative care, something that has not been done yet. This aspect is important since institutionalisation is the only alternative currently implemented for babies that were abandoned or separated from their families in Peru, even though it causes serious damage, especially during early childhood.

Secondly, it was suggested to strengthen the positioning of the programme as the first option in cases of separation instead of institutionalisation, which is the one that currently occupies that role, in order to avoid the placement of children in institutions.
RELAF will continue to closely monitor the experience of this programme, as it has been doing since it started. We trust that its committed team will take important steps to achieve its consolidation, its replication in other NGOs that are partners of the State, and its growth so that more Peruvian children and adolescents can grow up in a family.

RELAF participated in the “Workshop for the preparation of the guidelines of the Foster Care Program”. This workshop was established with the general purpose of promoting the right to community- and family-based care and the specific and immediate purpose of instituting the foster care practice as a public policy of the Peruvian state. It was a multi-sectorial activity that brought together cooperation from important actors involved in the protection of the rights of the children deprived of parental care or at risk of losing it. The commission working on the guidelines is made up of representatives of the Programa Integral Nacional para el Bienestar Familiar-INABIF (National Integral Programme for Family Well-Being); of the Dirección de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes- DINNA (Board of Children and Adolescents); of the UGPI; of the Ministerio de la Mujer y Desarrollo Social-MIMDES (Ministry of Women and Social Development); of the children’s institution “Nuevo Futuro Perú”; of the Organization “Amor y Ley”; and of Bucker Peru, which is the promoter of the commission together with UNICEF.

The representatives are currently putting a great deal of work into the preparation of a document of guidelines for the foster care programme, which will be their first product as a group.

RELAF participated in the first meeting of the working commission and contributed with its view that it is necessary to establish an integral protection system that avoids separation of the children from their families of origin and provides them with family-based alternative care that is adequate to a human rights approach or with residential care for those children that require it due to their particular situation.

In this sense, RELAF stressed the necessity of the commission to set itself as a sphere of permanent work that progressively involves all the actors related to the general subject that brings them together and that goes beyond the thematic frontier of foster care. All of this, in order to strengthen the practices and public policies that guarantee the right to community- and family-based care.

RELAF also provided the commission with specific knowledge about human rights approach in relation to the processes of foster care and its phases, knowledge that will be incorporated in the Guidelines that the commission is currently preparing.

The Network supports and encourages this initiative to move forward and sets itself as a permanent sphere of dialogue and collective, multi-sectorial, democratic construction. The situation of childhood in Peru requires it.

In March, Project Leader Matilde Luna held several meetings with the media and other local key actors involved in the implementation of the right to family- and community-based care, in which she talked about the work done by RELAF in the region. The activities were promoted by the office of UNICEF Peru, INABIF, Programa del Niño y del Adolescente of MIMDES (Programme for the Children and Adolescents, of the Ministry of Women and Social Development) and the organisation Buckner Peru.

This Andean country has the commitment to pay off a debt to childhood: institutionalisation is still the only response for children without parental care. Different local actors stated the necessity to have more resources for family-based alternative care, as well as resources to support the family of origin in raising their children.

There is still a long way to go for organisations responsible for public policies and for other social organisations. Besides, it is necessary to work with society as a whole, through the media and other resources, in order to build a vision in accordance with the right to family- and community-based care.

The sponsors’ commitment to give continuity to their tasks in this field of action is inspiring.

Relaf in the Peruvian media.

MODEL. ARGENTINE SPECIALIST IN FOSTER CARE EXPLAINS THIS FASCINATING EXPERIENCE IN DEPTH.

“Let’s dare to be the mark in a person’s life”
She suggests joining an initiative that changes the lives of many children.
In Peru, 13 families raise 16 children as if they were their own children.
 

Karina Garay Rojas
kgaray@editoraperu.com.pe

We share a newspaper article sent by Claudia León, Director of Buckner Peru.

As we informed in our March newsletter, during her stay in Peru, Project Leader Matilde Luna held several meetings with the media and other local key actors involved in the implementation of the right to family- and community-based care, in which she talked about the activities held by RELAF in the region.

The UNICEF office in Peru organised interviews between the expert and the local media to talk about the right to family- and community-based care.

Thanks to Claudia León we can share the newspaper article published by “El Peruano” newspaper, which was published on Wednesday, April 7 under the title “Let’s dare to be the mark in another person’s life”.

In the article, author Karina Garay Rojas included the activities carried out by the RELAF project and raised awareness of the right of every child to live in a family and a community, as well as the need in Peru to promote deinstitutionalisation processes and to strengthen family-based alternative care.

We highlight the relevant role the media can have in reaching society with projects and initiatives!

Read the complete article here: http://www.elperuano.com.pe/edc/2010/04/07/act1.asp

Technical assistance was given to the Foster Care Programme carried out jointly by Buckner Peru and INABIF - Programme of the Child and Adolescent of the Ministry of Women and Social Development. As a pilot programme in Peru, the Programme is innovative and although small in terms of the children included, it is very significant in the sense that it is developing a care experience with an appropriate focus: an alternative to institutional care in a context where children are overwhelmingly placed in “Homes”.

Currently, the Programme provides family-based alternative care to 32 children. Inasmuch as the programme was designed to deinstitutionalise children who are accommodated in residential attention centres (RAC), the majority of them originate from said homes, but the programme is able to respond to existing cases to avoid institutionalisation. The work the team is carrying out is important in relation to the reconnection of children with their families of origin. Given that the majority comes from long stays in the RAC, said links with families are often weak or completely broken.

In this sense, it is important to highlight the achievements that have been obtained, with children who have left the programme reintegrating with their family of origin and others who have reintegrated into their extended family. The team concerns itself with the context of poverty and the lack of public policies of support for families, which in some cases causes delay to the reintegration, but they work under the strong conviction that poverty cannot cause a sustained and unnecessary separation.

Contact details are as follows:

Buckner Perú
http://www.bucknerperu.org/
Tarata 269-oficce 205. Miraflores, Lima. Perú.
(511) 242-1858
(511) 446-9390

INABIF - Programme of the Child and Adolescent of MIMDES - Ministry of the Woman and Vulnerable Population
http://www.mimdes.gob.pe/
Jr. Camaná 616 - Lima Perú
Telf. (511) 626 - 1600
postmaster@mimdes.gob.pe