History
The CRC transitioned from a long-term residential orphanage to a family-care system in 2016 - 2018. During this time, we created a social work team to ensure that children reintegrated back into families well. The team began to visit all families monthly to check on their status. This practice continued as the CRC grew to support over 600 children in impoverished families that were at-risk of fracturing.
However, ongoing and unchanging financial support for a lifetime is not the answer to people born into poverty. It diminishes ability to develop self-management and know the dignity of moving toward independence. Supporting a family for years and years also limits the CRC’s capacity to help additional vulnerable families. HCW is strategically anchored in the philosophy of local ownership of solutions. In fact, the more localized the solutino, the more likely it will be sustainable. That is why we are working with the CRC to equip and empower families to care for their children. The CRC is now working to find ways to truly strengthen families and empower them to fend for themselves. The CRC’s primary goal is to remove barriers to families' graduation from CRC services.
The CRC transitioned from a long-term residential orphanage to a family-care system in 2016 - 2018. During this time, we created a social work team to ensure that children reintegrated back into families well. The team began to visit all families monthly to check on their status. This practice continued as the CRC grew to support over 600 children in impoverished families that were at-risk of fracturing.
However, ongoing and unchanging financial support for a lifetime is not the answer to people born into poverty. It diminishes ability to develop self-management and know the dignity of moving toward independence. Supporting a family for years and years also limits the CRC’s capacity to help additional vulnerable families. HCW is strategically anchored in the philosophy of local ownership of solutions. In fact, the more localized the solutino, the more likely it will be sustainable. That is why we are working with the CRC to equip and empower families to care for their children. The CRC is now working to find ways to truly strengthen families and empower them to fend for themselves. The CRC’s primary goal is to remove barriers to families' graduation from CRC services.
WHAT IS FAMILY STRENGTHENING?
Example: Fatmata Mattia is a strong lady with a good heart. Her husband died in 2017. He was sick for three years with cancer of the throat. Fatmata has four children living with her at home. The 5 of them share a 4-room unfinished house at the outskirts of town with 5 other family members. The house was being built when her husband got sick and passed away. She lives in the house with her sister, who has her own 4 children as well. Fatmata and her children have two rooms, and the other two rooms belong to her sister and her children. They both have been working together to save money to finish the house.
In addition to being a microfinance beneficiary, Fatmata also received family mentoring, ongoing case management, training in attachment and family strengthening workshops offered by the CRC. “All these teachings from the CRC have been very helpful as I bring up these children as a single mother. That’s why I don’t skip them. I always look forward to attending those parenting workshops,” said Fatmata. “With the death of my husband and all those other family challenges, it was becoming more and more difficult every day. But I know that our God doesn’t sleep. He saw our suffering and He sent the CRC as a rescuer. We are grateful.” Fatmata values education and she wants the best for her children. The children are doing well in school and Fatmata makes sure that the children are regular and punctual in school. She knows when they children should be in school and when they should be off from school, and speaks with the teachers to keep informed of her children's progress.
From her business, she can now have food on the table when her children are from school. She has the funds to enroll her children into extra (after school) classes to strengthen their academic performance. She strongly believes that with her children getting educated, things will just continue to be better. She takes her business seriously. “Initially, I used to be worried when schools were about to open. I think about the number of uniforms and learning supplies to get. I worry about how and where to get the school fees and extra charges for the children. I will be stressed out. But now with my business my worries have ceased. I can now do a lot of these for my children.”
Sometimes after school the children pass by her shop to visit. They sometimes would help her fix buttons on uniforms, and dresses. They wait around to close the shop and come home to cook and have family time. “My children also help to advertise my business to their friends at school and community. Their word-of-mouth advertisement has been really helpful in getting me more customers.” Fatmata added. She is presently using the regular tailoring machines at her shop. She is working on getting an embroidery machine that will help her grow her business even more.
Example: Fatmata Mattia is a strong lady with a good heart. Her husband died in 2017. He was sick for three years with cancer of the throat. Fatmata has four children living with her at home. The 5 of them share a 4-room unfinished house at the outskirts of town with 5 other family members. The house was being built when her husband got sick and passed away. She lives in the house with her sister, who has her own 4 children as well. Fatmata and her children have two rooms, and the other two rooms belong to her sister and her children. They both have been working together to save money to finish the house.
In addition to being a microfinance beneficiary, Fatmata also received family mentoring, ongoing case management, training in attachment and family strengthening workshops offered by the CRC. “All these teachings from the CRC have been very helpful as I bring up these children as a single mother. That’s why I don’t skip them. I always look forward to attending those parenting workshops,” said Fatmata. “With the death of my husband and all those other family challenges, it was becoming more and more difficult every day. But I know that our God doesn’t sleep. He saw our suffering and He sent the CRC as a rescuer. We are grateful.” Fatmata values education and she wants the best for her children. The children are doing well in school and Fatmata makes sure that the children are regular and punctual in school. She knows when they children should be in school and when they should be off from school, and speaks with the teachers to keep informed of her children's progress.
From her business, she can now have food on the table when her children are from school. She has the funds to enroll her children into extra (after school) classes to strengthen their academic performance. She strongly believes that with her children getting educated, things will just continue to be better. She takes her business seriously. “Initially, I used to be worried when schools were about to open. I think about the number of uniforms and learning supplies to get. I worry about how and where to get the school fees and extra charges for the children. I will be stressed out. But now with my business my worries have ceased. I can now do a lot of these for my children.”
Sometimes after school the children pass by her shop to visit. They sometimes would help her fix buttons on uniforms, and dresses. They wait around to close the shop and come home to cook and have family time. “My children also help to advertise my business to their friends at school and community. Their word-of-mouth advertisement has been really helpful in getting me more customers.” Fatmata added. She is presently using the regular tailoring machines at her shop. She is working on getting an embroidery machine that will help her grow her business even more.
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So why Family Advocacy instead of Family Sponsorship?
We know that child sponsorship programs can be a life-changing force for children who would otherwise be unable to access education or medical care. However, even the best child sponsorship programs raise some ethical questions around promoting an ethos of donor guardianship over a child, and positioning a child as a “money engine” within the family. It also leads to a greater focus on that child (by both donor and in some respects, the CRC), when best practice in social work focuses on the entire family as the unit of care. Our former SAC program was one of the best child sponsorship programs in the world, providing crucial financial and material support that helped children to attend school, receive education and medical treatment and assist vulnerable families in their struggle to survive. It connected supporters with people in need of support in a way that felt personal and genuine to both, but protected the well-being of children with specific safety protocols. But, as the CRC became better at supporting more and more children and families, the SAC support program’s traditional “orphanage culture” approach didn’t go far enough in sharing the type of parent strengthening and family capacity building work that had become the core of the CRC programs. We think that shifting the focus of our communications to reflect the key social work activities that have made the CRC a model program and sharing those stories will illuminate the real impact and change on families who are learning to become stronger and more resilient. Do not worry that the children CRC serves are getting less. The CRC will use your donations exactly as they have in the past, to ensure that children are cared for in the best way possible. HCW donors will still provide funds that contribute to services that are provided to children for things like school fees and medical care, but even more importantly, we want you to be able to recognize how these funds are crucial to providing families with targeted social work and family strengthening curriculum and the skills that enable families to enjoy the dignity of independence and the ability to help others reach that same independence. Becoming an advocate for strengthening the capacity of families and expecting that they will graduate from the program and parents become the family’s reliable and independent caregiver allows us to shift to a partnership model that empowers a family’s "capacity to use outside resources while reinforcing the qualities of autonomy, responsibility, and resourcefulness" (Fikkert and Mask). We are following the science, and the Bible, in ensuring parents can provide for their children as a sign of their faith in God’s plan. 1 Timothy 5:8 How are things changing? The social work of the CRC has increasingly focused on the family as the unit of care, and is now putting into place mechanisms to work with families to set graduation goals, chart their progress toward independence, and help them to get there. They’re seting expectations with caregivers in the CRC programs that they’ll be given the tools and capacity to become independent within approximately 5 years. The work that is ongoing in strengthening and empowering families and communities in villages is the next step in the growth of this work. |
What’s changed and why?
The CRC wants to do more, and do it better. Ongoing and unchanging support has a tendency to foster dependence. It diminishes the family's ability to develop self-management and know the dignity of moving toward independence. The CRC is now working to find ways to truly strengthen families. As the CRC's social work team has increased and deepened their own skills, they now seek to use these skills where they are most needed. They can work with individual families to identify goals, build toward those goals, and help families to graduate from CRC services. In fact, the CRC aims to be no longer needed, one family at a time, so that it can then Supporting a family for years and years also limits the CRC’s capacity to help additional vulnerable families. The CRC is bringing in more street-connected children to reintegrate them into families and is expanding outreach in more villages. It is becoming more critical to focus heavily on the early stages of CRC care, when acute needs are greatest and families are most fragile. How will CRC do this? By working more strategically, the CRC team will be able to strike a better balance: more intensive case management of fragile families, and less intensive case management of families that are closer to graduation. Toward this end, the CRC has launched a new "Zone" approach to caring for families. These color-coded zones highlight a family's progress from the "red" emergency zone to orange, yellow, and ultimately the "green" graduation zone. To assist families through this process, each family in CRC care will have it's own case plan that will guide progess toward graduation. In the case plan, CRC staff will identify ways in which families might benefit from specific community group trainings. For instance, families struggling financially may be recommended to the CRC's microfinance program. Families that need extra support with parenting or trauma can attend the Attachment Theory program. Beginning in summer of 2021, the CRC will begin to offer an integrated combination of these two programs as outreach in the villages for families that otherwise would not be able to attend in Bo. Strengthening existing community networks through such group programs is a natural fit in Sierra Leone. Families' case plans will also guide CRC staff to work individually with families to target special needs, including financial or material support that will likely lessen as the family becomes more self-sufficient. |
International development is shifting away from strategies that “make [indigenous people] dependent on foreigners for human and financial support (From Dependence to Dignity, Fikkert and Mask).” Helping Children Worldwide is committed to “[using] financial resources very strategically, placing a greater focus on training, equipping and leadership development… by providing consulting training and some financial resources offered in a nuanced, backstage, complementary and support role (Fikkert and Mask).” We need a new tool to reflect the CRC’s refined focus on the family as the unit of care (vs. a single child). We also want to help donors understand the depth and complexity of the social work the CRC is engaging families in and how it is designed to empower a family to become truly independent. We want our donors to understand that the funds they contribute have a far greater impact on a family’s growth than just access to education and medical care.
Additional things that will change: the annual Christmas parties have been set up for children who are enrolled in the CRC direct scholarship programs, but not their siblings who aren’t, or their caregivers. Letter writing events are fun for the children who attend, but they leave out the voices of the other family members, the case-workers and teachers and counselors who work with the families to strengthen and empower them. Shifting to a focus that embraces the entire family will mean that these activities look a little different moving forward, and the reports you get will give you an even better idea of how your contributions are changing lives! We’re changing the way we support families in the CRC program to reflect that the CRC has changed the way they care for these families, lifting to the light a holistic approach that is focused on empowerment and far more sustainable generation to generation. Advocates will gain a bigger picture of how the CRC works to build the capacity of families to make them stronger, more self-reliant, and capable. Communications from the field will let advocates see how families are progressing toward independence, because of their generous support and the hard, skilled work of the CRC social work team.
