Looking back on Week 2

Hello and well done for all your commitment in working through Week 2 of your course ‘Getting Care Right for All Children’.

This week we further explored the content of the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.

We are so pleased that many of you have been posting comments and sharing your thoughts and ideas around the topics we covered including how the use of formal care must only be used when it is proved to be absolutely necessary.

We started to explore the “necessity” principle in more detail and learnt how important it is to make sure there is as much information as possible about the child and their situation so a well-informed decision can be accurately made.

We learnt about the three different levels of prevention and, particularly with regard to primary prevention, the need to prioritise investment in community level support services for families when there is a risk of separation. We also considered the importance of assessing the individual needs, circumstances and wishes of a child so that the most appropriate support can be offered to them and their families.

We hope you are finding Asha and Lan’s story interesting and that you are keen to see what happens next week.

We also hope you now feel comfortable engaging in the following issues:

• How decisions are made when a child may be vulnerable to losing parental care;
• The three levels of prevention and why recourse to formal alternative care should be avoided whenever possible;
• Why communities, families and children must be able to realise their right to access basic and specialist services to prevent need for alternative care placement.