Getting children into safe alternative families

There is widespread acknowledgement that for many children outside of parental care, family-based care offers a preferable alternative to residential care. However, in Moldova as in many other countries of the world, foster care, a potential key mechanism for providing such family-based care, remains under-resourced and rarely used. We support central and local authorities to help children who lost the care of their parents to find new loving, caring and safe families.

We have supported the first piloting, design of different types of foster care placements, the development of the national foster care legislation (regulations and standards of care). We have supported foster carers, professionals, decision-makers and policy-makers across the country to plan, develop, monitor and evaluate foster care services. We have created the national training curriculum and training packages for training of potential foster carers. We have developed evidence-based communication packages calling for a wider use of foster care as an alternative to institutions for children without parental care.