The government plans to phase out children’s homes and orphanages and reintegrate children back into families and under community-based care.
The planned 10-year Care Reform Strategy seeks to provide alternative solutions to childcare and reinforces the fact that family will remain a key unit in child upbringing.
The assistant director in charge of Care and Reform at the Directorate of Children’s Services Jane Munuhe said the government has enacted a new law.
Speaking in Kakamega on Thursday, she said the Children’s Act 2022 makes provision for the 10-year period for Kenya to do away with children’s’ homes and orphanages.
“Kenya is a signatory to the United Nations Convention and Protocols on the rights of children and coupled with local laws, family and community remain the best alternative for child upbringing,” Munuhe said.
“This new children’s Act supports the rights of children to grow up in families and communities.”
Munuhe, who spoke to managers and social workers of orphanages and children’s homes said this is part of the training the Department of Children Services is involved in, to prepare them for the transition that has been adopted globally.
“The trainees are being taken through the provisions of the Children’s Act and care reform strategy. The aim is that once they get the knowledge they will be able to initiate the process of ensuring that children go back to their families and the community,” she said.
The official said there are 45,000 -50,000 children living in about 855 private charitable children’s institutions and others living in government-run institutions.
She advised the Kakamega trainers to conduct a situation analysis of children because it is going to project the magnitude of the problem that they will be dealing with as they start the care reform process.
Munuhe said those children who are homeless, orphaned or are separated from their parents, will be offered to an alternative family care programme.
She said the programme includes kinship care, foster care, guardianship and adoption.
