Children care reforms of reintegrating needy children to homes from Charitable Children Institutions (CCI) under an initiative dubbed ‘Changing the Way We Care’ (CTWWC) in Nyamira County has made laudable strides.
Children Services Director in charge of alternative family care, Ms. Carren Ogoti is impressed with the collaborative strategy children officers in Nyamira County are deploying, in making CTWWC initiative achieve commendable milestones within a short period.
During her three day visit this week in households within Nyamira County which have embraced alternative family care, together with Director for children services, Noah Sang’anyi, Ms. Ogoti observed that bringing on board all relevant stakeholders involved in dealing with children matters in the County has played a critical role in making steadfast progress in care reforms initiative worth emulating by other counties piloting the programme.
“This synergy by stakeholders is quite impressive and I believe it has played a great role in enabling children officers with the implementing partners of CTWWC programme progress steadily showing positive impact with manageable challenges,” Ogoti noted.
“Children are a very vulnerable group of people in our society and those in need of care and protection growing under the confines of CCIs find it difficult fitting into the the outside world when they become adults, and it’s against this backdrop that the children department initiated care reforms for such children and change them to home based care,” Ms. Ogoti explained.
While addressing the Clergy from the County during the visit, Director Noah Sang’anyi advised them to create more platforms where they will address children matters like child abuse, children’s behaviour and character, and the importance of embracing alternative care reforms within communities, as it was in the past to bring up an all-round child ready to cope with challenges in the society when they eventually become adults.
Mr. Sammy Korir, Nyamira County coordinator for children services, confirmed to KNA that they have reintegrated 119 children to 79 households within Nyamira County and the children are coping quite well.
Mr. Benard Oseko, Director of Manga heart, a Community based organization that has partnered with Catholic Relief Services and department of children services to implement CTWWC initiative said they are trying their level best to convince CCI managers to embrace the new care reforms and tell their donors to support them in order to support vulnerable children who have been reintegrated to homes.
“CCI managers are jittery about the care reforms, especially those targeting to make personal commercial gains but we are doing our best in sensitizing and empowering them, for them to fully embrace the home based alternative care reforms for children all in the best interest of the child,” Manga heart Director commented.
CTWWC initiative in Nyamira is under pilot together with Kiambu and Kisumu Counties to assess its viability before it is rolled out countrywide.
by Deborah Bochere
