Uganda Family Preservation and Domestic Adoption Success Story

This recurring column will showcase  individuals, groups or organizations that are providing family preservation programs or services.

US adoption agencies are trying to redefine themselves as family preservation providers as options for international adoption dwindle each month. As we have stated many times before, US adoption agencies should have no role in deciding which foreign children should be preserved in their families and which foreign children should be adopted-internationally or otherwise.

This program emphasizes the  reintegration of  the majority of children back to family members, tracing all the children that come to them. The principle of subsidiarity is applied to the rest-domestic adoption or domestic fostering. International adoption does not appear to be necessary. Success is clear after a mere three years.

“Ugandan families have in the past three years adopted over 100 children from the Malaika Babies Home in Kampala.

The Malaika Babies’ Home celebrated its third birthday with an Open Day yesterday at which NGO Ugandans Adopt confirmed the adoptions. Based in Mengo, Malaika has so far provided emergency short-term care to over 130 babies.

Aidah Agwang, an official of Ugandans Adopt , said that over the past three years they have successfully found families in Uganda for 100 of these children through resettlement and domestic adoption.

“Our team put a lot of time and resources into tracing families and as a result 66% of these children have been resettled with their extended families,” she said.

The open day was crowned with cutting of the cake by the children at Malaika Babies Home.

Nandi Ketti a police officer attached to the Child and Family Protection Unit hailed Malaika. “We appreciate what Malaika does especially when it comes to the children’s rights. Malaika Babies Home has helped us to save the lives of many Ugandan Children,” Ketti said.

Among the Malaika Babies Home supporters was Barbara Kyagulanyi “Barbie”, wife of musician Bobi Wine.

“It has been a wonderful day and we are very grateful for all the support of the Probation, Police and other children’s homes” said Immaculate Atwine, the Manager of the Babies Home. “Only by working together we can find families in Uganda for abandoned children.”
Ugandans adopt 100 babies

[New Vision 5/19/13 by Esther Namirimu]

Malaika Babies Home is part of the British Child’s i Foundation started by a former BBC producer. Some quotes from their website :

“We firmly believe children should grow up in families and not in institutional care.

→ Malaika Care

Our Baby and Family Centre provides short-term protective care for up to 24 at-risk babies from 0-2 years old.

→ Supporting Families

To prevent abandonment, our team provide practical support to vulnerable families to enable them to keep their children.

→ Making Families

Our Social Work team strives to ensure every child admitted into our care grows up in a family.

→ Promoting Family Care

Our advocacy team work closely with the Government to promote children growing up in families, not orphanages.”

 

And “We believe that children should grow up in a family. When children come to us, our social work team aims to safely return them to their own family or find a new Ugandan family ideally within three to six months to avoid long-term psychological damage.

Around 80% of children growing up in institutions have living relatives and are not ‘orphans’.

We make it our job to try and trace the children’s families and resettle them safely back into their families. In fact around 66% of children admitted to Malaika are reintegrated back into their extended family.”

UgandansAdopt also explains their fostering programs. “Child’s i Foundation aims to place all children in family based care. Where possible, it returns children to their extended families. When these cannot be traced, the children are placed with a view to adoption. However, in some situations the families of the abandoned babies are traced but are unable to care for them, usually because issues of past cruelty and neglect mean that it is not safe to return them. For this reason, children are placed with long term foster carers who care for the children on a permanent basis, sometimes into adulthood. Contact with the birth family is either terminated, or may take place away from the foster family.” [Parental rights termination is not automatic.]

 

 

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