Settling in a foster family

A single mother in Kinyinya in Gasabo district who adopted a child from a recently closed orphanage has described how she has managed to move on with her daughter.A visit to the foster family which adopted a child with mental disability proved child placement was possible. This home of Florence Bayisenge, a single mum, is a low income family class but enriched with love. It’s a family of five children, including the new arrival. The child, who has chronic epilepsy, is the eldest child in the new family and they are happy with her. Despite the child’s health complication, she easily plays with her age mates, who have legally become the siblings she never used to have.She sleeps with her foster mother for she develops fits at night. She is between 14-16 years old, looks jolly and healthy and mixes well with the other children. Officials from Hope and Home for Children, an organisation that works with the government to place children formerly in orphanages into foster families, say she is a new being all together.To them, the child’s performance indicators involve physical changes in terms of cleanliness, skin, where it looked as if they were traces of whipping ,have disappeared, including wetting beds and signs of malnutrition.The extended family accepted her. The foster mother specifically wanted a child with disability.“I just wanted a child I could show love. I knew she was epileptic. I sleep with her for her protection and protection of other children. She is not the first child. There is one I took care of until I married her off,” the mother says.The government has embarked on a campaign to close all orphanages by 2014, and the campaign includes encouraging child placement and adoption.Since the beginning of the campaign, the government and its partners have so far successfully placed 662 children in families since July 2011 and reintegrated 53 young adults into the community.Basing on various studies, the National Commission for Children embarked on transforming orphanages into family based support programmes.“Studies indicate how dangerous it is to keep children in orphanages and so there is no better place than a home setting, especially a qualifying home,” Alexia Mukashema, an officer at National Commission for Children, says.Epaphrodite Nsabimana, the head of programme management at Hope and Home for Children, said the adopted children are coping well in their new homes.“Child adoption is very possible. Our internal assessment shows us that 92% are doing well.”The remaining children who had not received foster homes are said to have been excited when they visited this child in the new home in Kinyinya.Foster homes are identified, assessed and children consulted, oriented and placed. They are then followed up.International placement and adoption was suspended due to various cases where parents or relatives would emerge and request for children who were already adopted and taken overseas.