From the Field Orphanage Improvement : An Important Part of the Child Protection Discussion (original) (raw)
2013
The impact of investing in early childhood development is paramount for the development of any country (Heckman, 2000). It is imperative that institutions that are home to young children outside of parental care, arguably the most at risk population in early childhood, be part of any national plan for early childhood development. Defining the numbers of children who are orphaned or without permanent parents is a worldwide challenge because of the lack of a consistent definition of the status of these children, lack of documentation on these children and lack of resources to monitor these children and the care they receive. Approximately 88% of children labeled as “orphans” by international agencies have been found to have one living parent (Sherr, Varrall, Mueller, Richter, Wakhweya, Adato, & Desmond, 2008), but regardless these children are part of the child protection system.
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