2012 June 14-15

The Central Child Welfare Board (Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare), UNICEF, Save the Children and the SOS Children’s Villages Nepal jointly organized a workshop on Policy Dialogue on Alternative Care of Children in June 14-15, 2012 at SOS Children’s Village Sanothimi, Nepal.  Around 200 participants from the national and international arena namely childcare professionals, academicians, planners and policy makers joined the workshop.  Its key purpose was to promulgate the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (GACC) in order to sensitize, de-institutionalize, empower and promote collaborative working culture among the alternative caregivers that would enhance quality of their services.  
Some Child Care Institutions have already implemented family strengthening and deinstitutionalized family – based alternative cares to children in need.  However, the current Draft of the Children’s Bill seems incomplete because it does not have clearly stated the legal and policy frameworks, provisions for allocating financial and human resources to implement various modalities of family support and alternative care in line with the UN Guidelines.  As such, the organizers felt an urgent need to initiate a policy dialogue among stakeholders and authorities in order to ensure children in need have access to quality care; and their interests and rights are taken into account. It was also the intention of the workshop to initiate a forum to facilitate the sharing of experiences and expertise, identify challenges and opportunities, and set priorities for the Alternative Care Providers.  Discussions of the workshop included policy formulation and reorientation, implementation strategies, coordination, networking and collaboration as well as capacity building. 
The organizers trust that this Policy Dialogue on Alternative Care of Children would help the policy makers, implementing agencies and the childcare professionals to develop a common understanding of international standard to initiate collaboration and policy reforms, and to identify innovative strategies which will address the needs of children without parents or parental care more effectively.