Christians have been urged to help foster children in their families and the communities, who may not necessarily be their blood relations, to become useful citizens.
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Mr Samuel Enyo Anaglate, the Head of Foster Care Service, Social Welfare Department, said too many children were in institutional care or on the streets who did not have proper care for lack of resources.
They ended up not getting the best education, shelter, and feeding among other challenges, making some of them turn against society or become a burden on the community, he said.
Mr Anaglate was addressing church leaders, social workers and childcare givers at a training on Forging a Roadmap for Alternative Care for Children in Ghana.
It was organised in Accra by the Family Based Care Alliance, a Civil Society Organisation in Ghana, in collaboration with A Family for Every Orphan (AFFEO), an organisation helping orphans to connect with their families.
Children, Mr Anaglate said, got better care within families than in institutions, hence the need for family-based care and fostering.
Institutional care, including orphanages, where every child had the same problem would not give room for children to grow in their natural state.
He said the United Nations guidelines on Institutional Care said institutional care should be the last resort when family-based care had failed, and thus encouraged Christians, especially, to embrace it.
The social worker said anyone ageg 21 and above, who was self-sufficient and had the interest, could foster up to seven children.
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Fostering was a temporary care for children and those who offered to foster those with special needs would be given financial support by the State, he noted.
He said an Alternative Care Policy was developed for children who could not live with biological parents because of death, poverty, or maltreatment. These children are given to another parent or family to cater for.
Ruth Sharon, a Child Protection lawyer in the United Kingdom, working with AFFEO, praised the Ghanaian extended family system, which supported orphans and vulnerable children.
She said the family was the best model of care for children and that Ghana was far ahead in the game.
“You are not behind but ahead, be encouraged,” she said, and urged families to put God first to help overcome the challenges in their caregiving activities.
Catherine A. Nartey, a lawyer and a facilitator, said due to the ill-treatment sometimes meted out to children in institutional care, the world was moving from residential care to family-based care and encouraged families to live up to their responsibilities.
GNA
