Through collaboration, almost 100 children from orphanages have been reunited with their families

“It takes a community to raise a child.” Some argue that Guyanese society has drifted away from this belief. However, ChildLinK’s partnership with the Childcare and Protection Agency (CPA) has dedicated teams who have focused their efforts to secure Guyanese children’s safety and development within family-based care.  As a result of such continuous concerted efforts, almost 100 children have been reintegrated back to their families from orphanages. The reintegration of children back to a family setting has continued to be successful over the past three years.  This collaboration between the CPA, ChildLinK’s development partner, the Delegation of the European Union to Guyana has had the privilege and esteemed opportunity to play a significant role and impact children and parents’ lives positively and in particular during the global pandemic. Children are indeed our future. It is crucial for any community development that its children are brought up in warm, loving households. Whether that household is biological, the child must feel the love, guidance and acceptance from their guardians; that which he or she would not always receive while being in institutional/orphanage care. With so many children being in the orphanages, it is difficult to properly attend to and express the adequate love, care and affection to each child as he or she requires or needs. Caregivers are stretched thin, especially in orphanages or institutions which host over 20 children from varying ages and gender. The difficulty is pronounced when considering that each child has his/her own personality and has been placed in the orphanage mostly as a result of abuse.

The Programme Manager of ChildLinK fondly remembers many positive instances of reintegrating children within family-based care. Every child and every case is different. Hence, ChildLinK and the CPA teams work diligently to ensure each child’s best outcomes. The process begins with a family conference being held to determine who will care for the child, to assess the caregiver’s willingness and capacity to reintegrate the child back into the home. Further, home visits are conducted to ensure that the dwelling space meets basic living standards.  In addition, children are provided with counseling during the reintegration process to prepare the child for living within a family and importantly to address the trauma of abuse that resulted in the placement and separation from the family. Parents attend 4-6 weeks of parental skills training and family bonding activities. During these activities, counselors support and assess the reunification process by teaching children emotional regulation skills such as anger management, conflict resolution, coping with anxiety and depression, sexual health education, violence, goal-setting and boundaries, communication skills, to name a few life skills for helping the child settling in to family life. Parents are taught discipline techniques, how to use rewards/ consequences as well as participating in bonding sessions such as goal-setting and gratitude exercises.

Ideally, reintegration should stick to the principle of doing no harm and embrace a child-centred approach and parents are usually required to go through the parental skills training before the child is returned into their care. However, parenting skills training may also be conducted after the child has been reunified with the family. The Case Workers in both agencies work together to ensure that the child’s return to their biological home will not be one of danger or harm. Additionally, they engage other agencies to provide support to families for household supplies such as mattresses and bedsheets. Fortunately for the team and the children, some parents are honest about their ability to sustain their biological children in their home. Most parents sometimes ask for assistance in providing beds, stoves, or ask for more time to get themselves a job. This honesty allows the team to have a clear understanding of the situation in the home enabling them to make better decisions for the family. Family plays the role of first teacher to children; the educator of morals and values. Children first are exposed to the ways of the world through their interactions with their families; therefore it is important that for us to have a world where happy, healthy, loved and productive adults live, we must first show the little people all the love, care and safety we can as adults.