Buckner-Inabif Foster Care Programme

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.