For the last year and a half, the educational team of IRIS Dakar has been working to professionalize and standardize the network of foster families. First, they wrote a document advocating for the alternative care system, as it is not yet included in the Senegalese law. Whenever we have the opportunity, we advocate for family-based care-systems, as IRIS Dakar’s slogan says: A family for every child. The educational team then developed the concept of how the IRIS Dakar foster family network operates. The concept covers the organizational chart, the roles and responsibilities of the foster parents and of the educational team, the target group and the procedure for placing a child, the application process and training of new foster parents, the expected standards of care, and the collaboration with biological parents and governmental or professional partners. As the concept writing process
draws to a close, numerous practical tools are being developed.
Last month we had the pleasure of organizing the first information session for new foster parents to learn about the vision, the application process, and what it means to be a foster parent. Four local couples attended the meeting and were eager to learn more about fostering. All are highly motivated to provide a loving home for the abandoned, orphaned and other at-risk children of Senegal. Two of the couples are already involved in kinship care. One man is the director of a center and has been
convinced of alternative care after several conversations with IRIS Dakar team members. So much so that he is moving from institutional care to family-based care, and from accepting children who have loving family members to accepting children who really need to be placed outside their immediate biological family. What a joy to see that the family care network is already multiplying! We are
looking forward to expanding the IRIS Dakar foster family network to be able to place more children who need a family to become whole as is the heart of our Father!
“A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling. God sets the lonely in families, he leads out the prisoners with singing; but the rebellious live in a sun-scorched land.” Psalms 68:5-6.