What is gatekeeping in children's care?

In the video above, Florence Martin, Director of the Better Care Network, and Delia Pop, previous Director of Programmes and Global Advocacy for Hope and Homes for Children, discuss the concept of “gatekeeping” in relation to children’s care, the role it plays in ensuring informed and appropriate decisions about children’s care, and how it operates in practice in different contexts and stages.

Florence and Delia explain what gatekeeping is, its place in implementing the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children and what it looks like in practice, using examples from a number of countries and contexts.

They tell us about what lessons have been learnt regarding operationalising gatekeeping and in particular, what key elements have been identified as essential to making gatekeeping effective.

The child welfare system

Florence and Delia provide concrete examples of the way gatekeeping can operate at different stages of a child’s involvement with the child welfare system, from responding to first concerns and preventing unnecessary separation to ensuring successful reintegration of a child into his or her family, or the provision of a stable, safe and nurturing alternative care option.

The particular role gatekeeping plays in reforms of child care and protection systems, especially to support a process of deinstitutionalisation and a shift towards more appropriate family-based options, is also discussed.

Other questions explored include how gatekeeping can work to ensure limited resources are better directed and managed to respond to the needs of children and their families; what the challenges are in establishing and maintaining an effective gatekeeping system; and how children and their families can be actively involved in shaping gatekeeping systems, with examples from Moldova, Rwanda, and Indonesia, among others.