As the first line of response for many children and families at-risk of separation, a well-developed and supported social service workforce—including social workers, paraprofessionals and community volunteers—plays an essential role in helping countries achieve lasting family-based care solutions.

Unfortunately, too often these workers are not appropriately equipped, supported or empowered to effectively support children and families in need. To ensure children separated from their original family, or at risk of separation, receive or return to high-quality family- and community-based care, countries must strengthen, deepen and sustain the motivation and competencies of the social service workforce.

The “Strengthening the Social Service Workforce for Family-Based Care” project in Uganda is implemented by Child’s i Foundation in partnership with the Association of Care Leavers Uganda (ACLU) and managed by the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance with technical support from consultants from Child Frontiers and supported by a grant from the Martin James Foundation. 

The project aims to learn from, record and amplify the knowledge and lived experience of youth and children with lived experience of care, their family members, and of social service workers, to develop a range of training and advocacy tools that will strengthen the social service workforce in support of family-based care.

Child’s i Foundation in partnership with ACLU through focused group discussions held interactive group exercises to help 133 young people and their care givers open up about their experiences of growing up in residential care, foster care and formalised kinship care.

The insights and videos gathered from the participatory sessions were then used  to develop engaging training tools to transform the knowledge, attitudes and practices of social service workers so that they are motivated by, and skilled in, prioritising family-based care for children.

The training tools were then tested with 30 social workers from government agencies, and NGOs, as well as with community volunteers and revised based on their feedback.

Resources developed from the project include;

1. Results of the consultations conducted with the care experienced children, youth and care givers.
2. Facilitator manual to guide the training of the social workers and community volunteers
3. The three training tools developed for the training including a poster on how social workers should help care experiences children, youth and their families, a video and handout on what makes a good social worker and case studies to use during the trainings.