The Department of Social Welfare and Community Development says it is introducing the ‘foster care’ system as a more suitable approach to raising street and neglected children as well as orphans in the Upper West Region.
The Department said children who grow up in the nuclear family structure, with love and care directly from parents are able to grow into well rounded adults.
Twenty foster parents have therefore been trained and licensed to cater for children. The Department is expected to train another 25 parents in the coming days.
The Regional Head of the Department of Social Welfare, Umar Issah spoke to GBC’s Radio Ghana’s Mark Smith on the sidelines of an Inter-sectorial Social Services Workshop at Wa. At the workshop, sister social services department were taken through the linkages among all the agencies.
The Department of Social Welfare and Community Development is mandated to work with stakeholders to develop communities through social development.
To solidify the partnerships formed with the stakeholders, the Upper West Regional Department held an Inter-sectorial Social Services Workshop to sensitize its partners to the roles they have to play to promote social development.
The Regional Head of the Department of Social Welfare, Umar Issah said despite financial and logistical constraints, the Department has achieved modest gains.
This includes the training and licensing of foster parents to provide stable growing environments for neglected children.
“We just do not get anyone to be a foster parent. The person is recruited by the Department of Social Welfare, is trained and licensed so that when we find a child, the child is placed in their [foster parents’] care. You [foster parents] do not take care of the child forever. For us in the Upper West Region, we have a committee that places children.”
“We have already trained 20 of the foster parents and we have placed nine children under them. We wish to train 25 additional foster parents. We are increasing the number because we do not want a situation whereby we have child we will want to foster and the foster parents ” are not around,” he explained.
Mr Issah said in other parts of the country, several orphanages have been closed due to their inability to adequately take care of the children.
He said the three orphanages in the region had done well in providing the basic needs of children.
Mr Issah said the Department will continue to play its supervisory role to ensure that the children in these orphanages get the best care.
“When you go to some of the orphanages, where some of the children are staying are not appropriate. You get into the rooms the children have no mattresses to sleep on. The food is not nutritious. In the Upper West Region we have 3 orphanages. We as a Department have been going out on inspection exercises to see whether they are up to standard. If we think that they are doing well, we commend them if they are not, we close them down,” he said.
Mr Issah commended the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU) for its continued support in transporting stranded children to safety.
He said the GPRTU has on several occasions assisted the Department to freely transport stranded persons.
Story filed by: Mark Smith