Policy was not about shutting orphanages per se, but transforming them into centres that provide services to vulnerable children by 2024.
Families have warmed up to the idea of taking in orphans with no known kin, while others have been taken in by relatives as Rwanda moves closer to its target of having an orphanage-free country by 2024.
In 2014 government came up with a policy to close orphanages and move these vulnerable children to known relatives, reconnect them to parents while those with no known kin were to be taken into foster care.
At the beginning, some families that had come forward to take in these children turned out to be unable to fulfil the responsibility, citing lack of resources to adequately care for them, while others reportedly mistreated their charges forcing them to flee into the streets.
However, seven years on the process appears to have turned the page, with the National Commission for Children (NCC) reporting that up to 3,396 children (88.7 percent of the entire orphans and vulnerable children population) previously in orphanages have been successfully reconnected.
James Nduwayo, the acting head of Child Development, Protection and Promotion Department, at the National Commission for Children, said the policy was not about shutting orphanages per se, but transforming them into centres that provide services to vulnerable children.
“The policy has achieved commendable gains so far, we are only remaining with four residential care institutions under SOS, since the beginning, 34 orphanages have been closed out of 38.”
An assessment conducted before the policy was implemented, 75 percent of children found in these so-called orphanages didn’t qualify them to be classified as orphanages in the first place.
Some 90 percent of the integrated children were reconnected with their parents and relatives, while 10 percent are in foster families. As the Covid-19 pandemic contracted resources and increased household poverty especially among vulnerable households, children bore the brunt of the economic contraction, forcing many to hit the streets.
“Facilitating the transition of these children from residential care facilities into family-based care settings, went through 12 [intensive vetting] stages, starting with engaging the institution, registering and assessing the charges.”