As the first line of response for many children and families at-risk of separation, a well-developed and supported social service workforce—including social workers, para professionals and community volunteers—plays an essential role in helping countries achieve lasting family-based care solutions. Unfortunately, too often these workers are not appropriately equipped, supported or empowered to effectively support children and families in need. To ensure children separated from their original family, or at risk of separation, receive or return to high-quality family- and community-based care, countries must strengthen, deepen and sustain the motivation and competencies of the social service workforce.
The Strengthening the Social Service Workforce for Family-Based Care project is a two-year project implemented and managed by the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance with technical support from consultants from Child Frontiers and supported by a grant from the Martin James Foundation. Implemented in Brazil, India and Uganda, it aims to learn from, record and amplify the knowledge and lived experience of youth and children with lived experience of care, their family members, and of social service workers, to develop a range of training and advocacy tools that will strengthen the social service workforce in support of family-based care.
In the first phase of this project, the project’s national partner in Uganda, Child’s i Foundation, used interactive group exercises to help 133 young people and their care givers open up about their experiences of growing up in residential care, foster care and formalized kinship care. They then used the insights and media gathered from the participatory assessments to develop engaging training tools to transform the knowledge, attitudes and practices of social service workers so that they are motivated by, and skilled in, prioritizing family-based care over alternative care. The training tools were then tested with 30 social workers from government agencies, and NGOs, as well as with community volunteers and revised based on their feedback.
Included are:
- Results of the consultations conducted with the care experienced children, youth and care givers;
- Facilitator manual to guide the training of the social workers and community volunteers
- The three training tools developed for the training:
- Tool 1: [Poster] How should social workers help me and my family?
- Tool 2: [Video and handout] What makes a good social worker?
- Tool 3: [Handout] Edith and Eric case studies
Note: The training tools are to be used in conjunction with the facilitation manual and are intended to provoke discussion with social service workers rather than to add unrealistic expectations to the qualities and roles of a social service worker.
