MCT and FAPE have been very busy these last few weeks with the launch of our foster care project, Osar al-Himaya (“Families of Protection”)! This project is part of the Himaya initiative, supported by UNICEF Maroc and the Ministry of Justice and funded by the European Union. This pilot project will place vulnerable children that have been in contact with the law, currently living in residential institutions, in local foster families.
After conducting interviews and hiring three new social workers, we started general trainings during the last week of September on childhood protection, confidentiality, and other topics.
On September 29th and 30th, we organized two press conferences in Taroudant and Agadir. Both events were well-attended by various actors involved in childhood protection, some of our partners for this project, and the local press.
This week, Substitute Families for Abandoned Children (SFAC), a British organization expert in foster care, is carrying out trainings for the different actors involved in the implementation of our foster care project, including social workers and public actors from the local courts. They will be covering the following topics: childhood development, attachment, trauma, institutionalization, foster care, training and working with foster carers, life-story work, managing children’s behaviors, contact with biological families, assessing, preparing, and matching families and children.
We hope to start matching children and foster families in January 2018 and to start placing these children in families by March 2018. Our aim is to place 7 children in Year 1 of the project and 30 children by the end of Year 3.
To stay up to date on our work, make sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter and Instagram!