International research

Many years of fruitful research have led to a clear picture of ‘why’ children benefit from growing up in a family. In addition, much is known about ‘what’ good care alternatives are. Despite this, many children still grow up without a family. Many organizations want to but do not know 'how' to apply family-based care. The organizations of Family Power have extended experience with this. In the international research they share their experience to show HOW family-based care can be used in practice.

Case study 
All participating organizations will provide data and learnings from a running case project or program aimed at family-based care for vulnerable children. Vulnerable children is defined as children without adequate parental care or being at risk of losing that care. An important sub-set of this are special needs children. The cases vary from kinship care to de-institutionalizing and from preventive care to policy change. We receive support from Radboud University for the case study at academic level. The central research question here is:
How do strategies and daily practices by local NGOs contribute to deinstitutionalization of children’s care worldwide?

Data collection
The international partners play a crucial role in the research. They share information about their approach and experiences of their employees, beneficiaries and important stakeholders. By means of questionnaires, (digital) interviews, reports and documents they provide information to the project coordinator. In group discussions the international partners share knowledge and experience on an in-depth level. All projects will be visited once by the project coordinator to continue dialogue with employees and observation. Finally, a pilot will be carried out with digital storytelling, in which children share their story and process by means of self-recorded video images.

Monthly meetings
Team Meetings are organized every month. During these digital meetings, the international and Dutch partners come together for group discussions and the internal training program (see Training and consultancy program).

“I am happy to share with members of various countries instead of only our own. Not a lot of organisations think about a collaboration like this. They give direct help to children and families but do not share their knowledge. Growing together is very important.”
– Ranjani Rajapaksha, DLFF Sri Lanka