A cooperation with both results and challenges

During June, the RELAF team based in Panama kept working on the technical cooperation with UNICEF Panama and the civil society, with the intention of building a subsystem focused on the protection of children separated from their families or at risk of suffering such a fate.

During the last week of the month, Federico Kapustiansky (Advocacy Coordinator for RELAF) traveled to Panama to hold meetings with several working groups.

Both government authorities, MIDES Panama and SENNIAF, as well as emblematic institutions of the Panamanian civil society (Hogar Malambo, SOS Children’s Villages Colón and â€ªCiudad del Niño) are running programmes and reviewing, adapting them, and studying strategies for deinstitutionalisation.

All these actions have a dual purpose. The first is to change the reality of institutionalised children in the short term and return them to their families or to others who want to care for and protect them. The second is to create actions, protocols, programmes and a new regulatory framework to promote, prevent, protect and restore the right to family and community life of all Panamanian children.

In this regard, it’s with great joy that we share some of the results of the Casa Hogar Soná (CHS) Pilot Programme. In June, 4 teenagers and 1 child, son of one of the teenagers, were returned to family life. In turn, we expect that five more girls be deinstitutionalised during July. We are still adjusting the first draft for the normalisation of the CHS pilot programme, and, as it further develops, we hope it can be applied to other deinstitutionalisation programmes and/or the conversion of full-time institutions.

Under an institutional restructuring plan, the three NGOs taking part of the experience as "witness cases" are showing significant progress: Malambo has reduced the number of institutionalised children by 25%. Ciudad del Niño has strengthened its Daily and Family Support Programmes, both fundamental in preventing family separation.

We have deepened our work with SOS Children's Villages of Panama/Colón so that they can adapt their practices in compliance with the standards of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Guidelines for Alternative Care of Children.