When children lose their parents or can no longer live with them, they need and have a right to suitable alternative care.
Suitable alternative care means a safe and caring environment for each individual child to grow and reach their full potential.
SOS Children’s Villages has been providing quality alternative care since 1949. More than 180,000 children have found a loving home in an SOS family.
Today, we are active in 136 countries and territories, working to ensure that no child grows up alone.
We believe that, whenever possible, children should grow up with their biological families. Despite the best efforts of authorities and SOS family strengthening, family breakdown is sometimes unavoidable.
​
At such times, children need suitable alternative care until their family's circumstances improve enough for them to return home. Children who no longer have a living parent require long-term quality alternative care to support them in developing into independent adults.
​
We promote and are guided by the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care for Children to which we made key contributions in the development process. In line with the guidelines, we draw on our wealth of experience to provide and support a range of alternative care settings, because different children, different cultures, and different situations call for different care options.
Family care for every child
We promote and are guided by the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care for Children to which we made key contributions in the development process. In line with the guidelines, we draw on our wealth of experience to provide and support a range of alternative care settings, because different children, different cultures, and different situations call for different care options.
​
​
-
We provide care and education to equip each child to face life’s challenges in the future.
-
We nurture a secure, loving and reliable relationship between the child and their parent or a primary caregiver.
-
We work with community partners to develop strong social support systems for children and families to develop, grow and learn in a positive, supportive environment.
-
We aim to provide the most appropriate care for each individual child.
-
We focus on the long-term development of each child. We listen to them, and encourage them to participate fully in their own personal development plan.
-
We aim to keep families together. Where this is not possible, we try our best to keep siblings together and to maintain connections with parents and relatives so long as those relationships are safe and supportive for the child.
Pillars of SC family care
​​
Types of alternative care we support
Samaritan Compassion provides and supports a range of alternative care settings for children who have lost the care of their parents.
we support the following types of alternative care for children:
Care in the best interest of each child
​
In every type of alternative care we provide, we always put the best interests of the individual child first.
Although we believe that children thrive best in a family environment, there are sometimes occasions when it is not in the child’s best interest to be placed in family-like alternative care.
For example:
-
To avoid attachment issues and/or repeat separation trauma where placement is temporary before a child is reintegrated with his or her biological family. In such cases, an emergency shelter or transit home may be a better choice.
-
Where the experience or character of the child, the need to keep siblings together, or the required level of care call for small group homes as the most appropriate form of alternative care.