‘Send orphans to homes of origin’
The National Coordinator of Orphanages and Vulnerable Children (OVC), Mr Fred Sakyi Boafo, has stressed the need for children in orphanages to be sent back to their original homes to decongest the various orphanages.
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Orphanages
According to him, when children remain and grow in the orphanages, they need more money to provide their needs in terms of facilities and the cost of education.
“Children are not necessarily to be sent to their biological families but other family cares such as foster homes, adoptive parents and others which could be made available to decrease the numbers in the orphanages, “he said.
Mr Sakyi Boafo was speaking at a forum on orphan care in Ghana organised by the Association of Children’s Homes and Orphanages (ACHO-GH), in collaboration with All God’s Children International (USA) in Accra on Tuesday.
The forum, themed, “Re-Visiting Orphan Care in Ghana,” was organised to bring stakeholders together to strategise, work and support orphans and vulnerable children by providing their needs.
The national coordinator said since 2009, a lot more children’s homes in the country were operating without licence from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection.
The Care Reform Initiative Unit, he said, was established to monitor the activities and control the increasing of children’s homes to ensure that sanity prevailed in them.
The Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, said the government would assist children’s homes which were genuinely delivering according to the needs of the children.
The minister, who was represented by the National Director of the Department of Social Welfare, Mr Sampson Nii Trebi, said galamsey activities had caused the death of many parents who were involved and that had increased the rate of children in most orphanages.
The minister said there was the need for children’s homes to acquire licence before operating.
AGCI’S
A representative of All God’s Children International (AGCI’S), Ms Kate McDodson, said the twenty-year-old worldwide-based organisation, helped children to grow up in families that provided them with their needs such as education, love, among others
She said AGCI’S offered family care options such as adoptions and prepare interested couples to ensure the implementation of those options.