Alternative Care

Alternative care services are offered for children and young people who have lost the care of their family of origin and for whom the child protection responsible authorities based on the national legislation and national admission procedure have decided that alternative care is necessary. The overall goal is to provide a suitable alternative care for children without parental care in the Republic of Albania in which they will grow with love, respect and security.

The pandemic situation has brought a lot of insecurity and fear for the future. Most of the children admitted in alternative care are placed as a protection measure by the state authorities due to different reasons. There is a lack of aftercare services as well as an undeveloped legal framework in country on the topic. Main challenges, come as result of missing aftercare services and are reflected in young people employability, housing, health issues, nutrition, education, mentorship, psychosocial services, in few cases endangering their survival as well.

Target group of SOS Children’s Villages Albania are children without parental care, or children at risk of losing it, who are living in inadequate care situations and vulnerable circumstances.

CARE SOLUTIONS
SOS Children’s Villages offers a range of complementary services responding to both their care needs and the root causes of their situation.

Our solutions are always aligned to:

Accordingly, our care solutions include alternative care, family strengthening, and advocacy and partnership for quality care.

CARE…

….is defined as “parenting children and young people”. It covers both care in families of origin and care in an alternative setting.

The Care Effect

The key is quality care, and investment into it has a multiplying effect – as children receive enriching care, flourish and realize their potential from generation to generation. It all starts with ensuring that children have the quality care of a parent or another caregiver from a very young age until they are ready for independent living. Care for children makes the world a better place. That is the care effect!

When it is in the best interests of the child and in agreement with the relevant authorities, we provide and use our experience and competence to explore relevant alternative care solutions, together with partners. We have almost 27 years of experience in offering alternative care based on a family-like care model, which we call SOS family care, and in other alternative forms of care such as foster care and youth communities. We review the placement on a regular basis, exploring all care options based on the best interests of the child. If it is in the best interests of a child to return to the family of origin, we actively support and carefully accompany this process. No other organization has our depth of experience in providing alternative care, and this experience informs our family strengthening and advocacy work. We make every effort to find a solution where siblings can grow up together and consider factors such as age, gender, faith, special needs, health status, geographic location and expected placement duration.

Whilst a child is in alternative care, we encourage strong links between children and their family of origin, as long as it does not harm the well-being of the child. We review the placement on a regular basis, exploring all care options based on the best interests of the child. This includes supporting and guiding reintegration with their family of origin, if suitable.

In alternative care, we empower children and young people in various aspects of their individual development, so that they are able to become self-reliant and contributing members of society. This process begins with a special focus on early childhood development and ends with quality aftercare support. Throughout the child and family development process, we build on each child’s, young people and family’s unique set of strengths, skills and knowledge. We do this through ongoing participation of children and families. They are always at the center of their own development. Parents play a leading role in guiding and support the development of children, with the children taking increasing responsibility as they grow older

SOS Children villages Albania has in place a multi-disciplinary system approach, which includes not only provision of direct services or a range of complementary services but an effective and systematic intervention in capacity building and development of accurate community support systems for our target group.

Since 1996, SOS Children’s Villages has been providing high quality alternative care services for 284 children and young people who have lost their parental care. Throughout care experience:

One child is adopted
133 young people who left SOS care are now independent and able to take care of themselves.
62 are reunified with families of origin and supported thorough all process.
90 children and young people are taking care actually with quality alternative care

Youngsters who are independent now has these results:

95 % of young people are employed and are successful in their life (more than 55 % of young people employed are working on their profession).

35% of young people who left care have finished the University of the Country. Some of them are attending MA degree in different universities of the country or abroad.

35% are married and have created their families with children. Despite challenges of life (few of them are divorced) none of our youngsters who have created families have abandoned their children (they did not repeat the history of their lives).

More than 20 % of independent young people are living abroad and are integrated very well.