TWO YEARS OF TECHNICAL COOPERATION SHOWING RESULTS

As mentioned in previous articles, RELAF and UNICEF Mexico, along with the Mexican government, have been developing a technical cooperation in order to implement and strengthen the Foster Care Programmes at federal and state levels since May 2016. Work on the federal level is being done jointly with the Federal Attorney's Office for the Protection of Children and Adolescents and with the National DIF (the National System for the Integral Development of Children); at state level, we are working together with five DIF agencies: Mexico City, Tabasco, Morelos, Campeche and Chihuahua.

The goal is to establish pilot foster care programmes in these states. As part of this process, working teams were formed and foster care manuals were produced. The teams were trained on the practical steps for the implementation of all stages of a foster care programme. This helped enhance the teams' practices while supervising their interventions and supporting them so that they could incorporate standards and procedures with a rights-based approach, in light of the aforementioned manuals.

Throughout the cooperation, the teams acquired practical experience in all the processes of foster care. Currently, the teams are undergoing the final phase of the project, which involves the monitoring of the working plan and the conclusion of the foster care processes. Previous stages already experienced by the teams included an initial stage to call, evaluate and train foster families, and an execution stage. During the latter, a work plan was prepared, children were introduced to their foster families, and the teams monitored the foster care process.

For the next June, we expect to have a closure event in which we can show the results of these two years of technical cooperation. A systematisation will be prepared to collect the results of the process and evaluate it. This systematisation will provide the basis to project the continuity of the process. Next, we share the results up to April: