Today, the home cares for 34 babies, coming from many different districts of Uganda and ranging in ages from 0-3. In addition, we're also providing support and family strengthening to 24 reunified families.
The team from Catholic Care for Children in Uganda visits our Babies Home for monitoring and evaluation.
Our goal is to help these children in our care and others in safe and loving families through kinship, family reunification, and community-based care.
We don't want our support to end for a child after they've resettled into families; In fact, our assessments indicate that there is often a great need in supporting the transition for both the child and families immediately after resettlement for the best possible success.
Our dream is to eventually extend our support (through providing essential needs, job training, parenting classes, crisis support, and therapy) to families in our community experiencing poverty, family issues, and lack of services.
Currently, we support:
Children that have been resettled come to visit the CCI and receive support packages. We are grateful for the successful stories of the happy children that have been resettled.
What is Family-based care?
Family-based care focuses on providing the love, nurture, and security that allows a child to thrive through reunification with biological parents, kinship care, foster care, or adoption.
Also, a vital part of supporting family care is strengthening families to prevent unnecessary separation.
Our Program
To ensure the sustainability of family-based care, we are doing the following:
Continuum of Care
Changing the way we care to a family-based approach
Children should be families and kinship care, not orphanages.
Research affirms that the best environment for children is within a loving, secure family.
At Lira Babies Home, we seek the best interest of each child, which is finding a permanent family setting as soon as possible.
That's why we're committed to strengthening families, and we are now shifting towards a family-based care model.
Children have the best chance to thrive when they grow up in a family. That's why we're committed to strengthening families, and we are now shifting towards a family-based care model.
Our Work
Our program's transition (with the general running of our home) emphasizes sustainable family-based care more than institutionalization while advocating for children's best interests
Ezra and Agatha at 6 months old
Our Programs
With the general running of our Babies Home, these are the programs we are focusing on to one day be able to impact more babies and children by supporting them in loving families.
Transitioning our model while improving and running our home
We're raising funds to help us transition our Babies Home, feed and care for the children currently within our home, improve our facility, and resettle children within our care into safe and loving families. If children are in families, we can impact more children by providing child-centered, family-focused care.
We don't want our support to end for a child after they've resettled into families; In fact, our assessments indicate that there is often a great need in supporting the transition for both the child and families immediately after resettlement for the best possible success. Our dream is to eventually extend our support to families in our community experiencing poverty, family issues, and lack of services.
Once we've updated our facilities and resettled children into families, our program seeks to engage through family assistance and community events; equip families through financial empowerment, baby/child and youth development education, and spiritual growth. In addition, we want to elevate families through family coaching, counseling, and spiritual enrichment.
Once we've fully transitioned, we will be able to provide job training, parenting classes, crisis support, and therapy to meet the basic needs of families who live nearby.
Family-based care and Kinship care
Lira Babies Home is raising funds to help with family-based care services. In most cases, kinship care – where extended families take care of babies or children whose parents have died or abandoned them.
We want to provide these family members with financial support, food, health care, and parenting coaching from our staff.
To prevent unnecessary family separation, we're also creating community awareness of alternative childcare methods and child protection.
Family Strengthening
We know that children have the best chance to thrive when they grow up in a family. That's why we're committed to strengthening families and helping keep them together.
While our home is raising funding for the running costs of our home so that we can meet the essential needs of the children in our care right now, we are also raising funds to provide support and empowerment to the already resettled families.
It's our goal to provide families with spiritual development and skills training that build a strong foundation for empowerment and self-sufficiency. For the children who haven't yet resettled, we are raising funds to provide them and their families a resettlement package when the reunification does happen.
Furthermore, we plan to help parents gain skills that can help sustain their families for the long-term, including:
- Necessities, such as food and healthcare as needed
- Parenting coaching
- Family support counseling via trained therapists and social workers
- Economic planning and job skill development so that they earn income from trade skills, such as baking, knitting, sewing, welding, computers, or bookkeeping, and more