Research demonstrates that family based care is important for a child’s physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. In 2017, there were more than 16,000 children living in residential care institutions in Cambodia. Approximately 80% of these children have one or both parents living.
Family Care First, led by the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veteran and Youth Rehabilitation and facilitated by Save the Children, is a network of organizations working together to support children to live in safe, nurturing family based care. We work collaboratively, with the government, local and international NGOs, academic institutions and UN agencies, to promote and strengthen family based care.
With more than 60 member organizations, some of whom are funded through the project, we are working to prevent children from being separated from their families and increase the number of children that are safely and successfully integrated into family care. We do this by strengthening systems and policies and working directly to provide services to children and families.
Family Care First receives funding support from USAID.
Summary of Key Activities
Family Care First works on strengthening systems and policies at the national level, and works directly to provide and improve services to children and families. We support children to live in safe, nurturing family based care.
We are working with the Cambodian government to agree a common approach to child protection and system strengthening, which includes developing a national plan to strengthen child protection mechanisms. Our partners work at the community level to provide direct support to strengthen vulnerable families and communities to prevent unnecessary child-family separation. They also provide services that place children into safe, nurturing family based care, including their biological family, kinship care and foster care.
Family Care First is working in line with the government’s target provinces, the program is being implemented in Battambang, Kandal, Phnom Penh, Siem Reap, and Sihanoukville.
Our History
In 2014, USAID launched Family Care First, a global initiative that seeks to uncover and advance transformational solutions that considerably reduce the number of children growing up outside of safe, nurturing, family-based care. In 2015, Cambodia was selected as the first site to pilot this approach.
FCF Cambodia evolved from a co-creation, co-design workshop sponsored by USAID in March 2015 in Phnom Penh. Participants included 40 individuals representing government, UNICEF, and an alliance of NGO’s aiming to help Cambodian children reach their full developmental potential. The fundamental challenge presented at the workshop was to propose solutions to substantially and safely reduce the number of children living outside of family care in Cambodia. From this workshop four thematic areas were created ranging from government systems strengthening to direct service delivery, illustrating that a collaborative, cross-sector approach would be needed.
Save the Children received an award from USAID to facilitate FCF in late 2015, and to manage and oversee sub-awards to implementing partners. FCF partners who attended the co-creation workshop were tasked with co-designing short-term evaluable demonstration and pilot projects to quickly learn more about, and address, the development issue. Partners worked collaboratively, without any organizational allocation of responsibilities or funding to ensure the best ideas were put forward.
Partners presented a range of activities to a Strategic Review Committee (SRC), which comprised of experts from the Cambodian and international Child Protection sector, and government representatives for feedback. The activities were supported after a non-competitive process, which included open discussions amongst all partners about which organizations were best suited to the different pieces of work, with prior Partnership assessments to ensure that the partners had the required capacity and systems to implement effectively. These projects commenced in late 2016.
In January 2019, Responsive and Effective Child Welfare Systems Transformation (REACT) has been awarded to Save the Children as the lead applicant and co-applicants including Friends International, Mith Samlanh and Cambodian Children’s Trust. MoSVY is associate applicant. UNICEF is a technical co-applicant.
Ongoing collaboration has continued between FCF | REACT members, with regular learning events to share experiences and lessons learned during implementation. There has also been continued collaborative development of proposals, when funding opportunities arise. The FCF | REACT membership has continued to expand and now we have more than 60 member organizations engaging to work together to support children to live in safe, nurturing family based care.
Our Donors
Whilst the initial funding for Family Care First was from USAID, additional donors have also begun to contribute to Family Care First | REACT including the European Union (since January 2019), GHR Foundation, Save the Children Hong Kong (since March 2017), and UNICEF Cambodia (since March 2018). There is growing interest from donors in this highly collaborative process to address the complex issue of supporting children to live in safe, nurturing family based care.
Donors also work in a collaborative manner to support implementing partners to address the most pressing issues facing children and families.
FQA's
Have Questions About Us?
There is significant amounts of research that demonstrates the harmful impacts of residential care on children. Residential care has a lasting impact on a child that goes onto adult life. Children do not thrive in residential care. They do not meet their developmental potential and it is more costly than family based care.
Family Care First has directly impacted 3,681 children and 5,317 adults in 2017 and 2,646 children and 2,797 adults in 2018.
We have provided support to 73 Residential Care Institutions to change their model of care, and 25 of them are in the progress of being transformed into community centers. Seven of our members are now providing family-based care support for children. We have referred 156 children with support in 11 villages in Battambang and conducted 3,924 family visits to support families with placements. Our Positive Parenting training has been participated by 44 participants from the government and NGOs. The online case management system, OSCaR, that we support has been utilized by 31 organizations with more than 10,000 children’s cases entered.
We’re conducting a research on the nature and extent of Online Sexual Exploitation of Children is currently being implemented. We are also working with the Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation (MoSVY) to develop three sets of Social Work Guidelines.
Family Care First brings multiple organisations together to discuss issues facing children and families and determine programming innovations. We work together to develop programs to improve outcomes for children and families, and ensure that children can live in safe, nurturing family based care.
Our network includes local Non-Government Organisations (NGO’s), international NGOs, UN agencies, donors, academic institutions and government partners.