Between 2005-2015, Cambodia saw a substantial rise in the number of Residential Child Welfare Institutions (RCWIs), also known as orphanages, being run and the number of children living within them. Decades of research around the world show that RCWIs cannot provide the individualised care, love and attention a child needs to develop and thrive. When orphans and vulnerable children cannot be reunited with family members, family care/placement (foster care or adoption) that is well monitored and supported is an extremely effective alternative, ensuring they can grow up and thrive in a safe, stable, and nurturing family environment. Although there are examples of NGOs operating their own family care programmes in Cambodia, these are often unregulated and unaccountable, as well as being ultimately unsustainable in the long-term. Furthermore, there is currently no government run family care system in Cambodia. This is where Care for Children comes in.

Care for Children works in partnership with governments, including a matched funding scheme, helping them to reform their child welfare systems. The purpose of this project is to equip the Cambodian government with the knowledge, skills and encouragement to develop their own family care system. By developing five RCWIs into best-practice models of family care, these will serve as inspiration to the government and a blueprint for all other RCWIs across Cambodia to follow once this pilot stage is complete and the project enters stage two of four, ‘National roll-out’.

The project sponsored by the Light Foundation enables five government run RCWIs to set-up and run their own family care programmes, whereby children are moved out of the institution and into local, loving foster families, where they can be nurtured to reach their full potential. In the long-term, these five RCWIs, which will become best-practice models of family care. They will serve as inspiration to the government and a blueprint for all other RCWIs across Cambodia to follow once this pilot stage is complete and the project enters ‘National roll-out’, reforming and strengthening the system nationwide through national family care guidelines and legislation change.