For many parents, their only option is to put their child in an orphanage
Poverty, discrimination, war and natural disaster are all factors that can cause children to become separated from their families. For many desperate parents seeking help, their only option is to put their child in an orphanage.
THE PROBLEM
In Sri Lanka, 80% of children in orphanages have at least one living parent. With support, most families could care for their children at home. Children without families could be looked after in family-like environments or through community-based services such as adoption and fostering, where they can be provided with the care to meet their needs.
More than 80 years of research proves that no matter how well an orphanage is run, children do not thrive,
and they flourish better even in the poorest families.
However, in Sri Lanka there are still more than 21,000 children currently living in orphanages.
Raising children in an orphanage, or other institution, harms their health and development. It increases their chances of abuse and puts them at risk of future criminal activity. The consequences of extreme neglect are not just physiological. There is also evidence of impairment of brain cognition, intelligence, and the ability to form relationships. They are significantly more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, suffer teenage pregnancy, have depression and commit suicide.
WHY ARE CHILDREN IN ORPHANAGES
THE PROBLEM WITH ORPHANAGES
Children in orphanages are isolated.
Children are isolated from their families, their communities and the outside world. They are often hidden inside orphanages, voiceless, segregated and without consideration of the potential support a family might need to stay together.
Even when orphanages and institutions are set up with good intentions, care is usually tailored to the needs of the institution, not the child. Staff struggle to cope with high numbers of children, particularly those with complex physical or psychological needs. Physical contact, care and attention become a luxury.
Good care has the child’s needs at its heart – whether that’s in a family or a family-like setting.
By closing institutions, supporting children into loving, stable families and working with governments to tackle the root causes of family breakdown, we are working towards a day where orphanages have been eradicated for good.
You can clearly see the difference in the image below, between a 3-year-old child brain which has been loved and nurtured to that of a child where these neurons have not developed.
This is at the core of TFT's work and why we think it is so important to get children in a safe and nurturing family environment from an early age to prevent irreparable damage.
Read more...
Did You Know?
Most children in orphanages have families who love and want them, but are born into poverty, or with a disability, in a location where families have little or no support.
With access to health and social care, it is hard to imagine making the decision to place your child in an orphanage or institution. But for many families, there is no choice.
At Their Future Today, we have seen that extreme poverty is the main reason children are placed in orphanages.
Circumstances such as war or natural disaster, discrimination or disability exacerbate the issue and force desperately poor parents to seek help. Without support, their only option is to put their child in an orphanage.
Orphanages take children out of poor families with the promise of food, education or healthcare that their parents can’t access – or feel they are unable to give.
When you are struggling to feed your family, the burden of having to travel to access the right healthcare or education for your child seems impossible. With a lack of local infrastructure and support, it often is. Sadly, the reality is that even in orphanages, children can be neglected and exposed to serious abuse and harm. They are often traumatised by their experiences.
This all means that many children end up institutionalised for life.
But this shocking global problem has an affordable solution.
With support, most families could care for their children. And children without families can be looked after in foster or adoptive families, or in small group homes.
Working in Sri Lanka to Achieve Lasting Change
Since 2005, Their Future Today has helped over 16,000 children and families in their communities. We work to prevent family separation, reunite families, provide education and improve the system to put families first.
OUR IMPACT
Since 2005, Their Future Today has helped over 16,000 children and families.
We work at a grassroots level to improve social and health care while providing education and vocational training for institutionalized and disadvantaged children. We reunite abandoned children with safe families and support them until self-sufficient. Our inclusive work with disabled children is preventing abandonment in the community and we are creating a recognized model to help overcome stigmas to give every forgotten child their right to a family, their right to an education and their right to life.
ENABLING EDUCATION
TRANSFORMING
INSTITUTIONAL CARE
BRINGING & KEEPING FAMILIES TOGETHER
3000 Children in poor families receive schoolbooks annually since 2006, enabling them to go to school to change the cycle of poverty for future generations
100 Children from the Deaf School in Galle received school books in 2019
100 Institutionalised young people receive vocational training in IT & Sewing annually since 2011.
80 Young adults and children earned qualifications in IT & Sewing in 2018
100 Abused and disadvantaged girls are learning Baking skills in the TFT Bakery project.
15 Institutionalized girls received training in childcare, health, and nutrition.
27 Law students received training in 'Alternative Family Based Care'.
85 children benefit from affordable early learning development of excellence at TFT International Preschool which opened in 2015 in a poor rural community.
20 TFT Housemothers received accreditation certificates in attachment, nutrition, health, massage and well-being.
100 Institutionalised abused and disadvantaged girls receive art, drama and music therapy sessions annually.
4 children benefit from subsidised pre-school places.
350 disabled children benefit from one Braille machine
3 different schools will benefit from Braille machine donation to a Blind teacher at the Women's Development Centre in Kandy
A 7 year old child who was blinded and orphaned after the terrorist attack on Easter Sunday, has received a Braille machine
20 Carers are employed to raise standards of
health & care in an orphanage.
85 Abandoned babies and children under 5 are receiving quality care to prepare for their reunification into their own families or for foster families.
1 Orphanage Preschool has been set up to ensure abandoned children receive early learning development to develop vital brain neurons.
1 Physiotherapist and speech therapist is employed to benefit 12 children who can now stand, walk, run, jump, speak, and count.
300 Social and probation workers were trained by TFT global partners in 'Family and Foster Care Alternatives'.
100 Children in an institution received 20 bags of cricket equipment so they could finally play cricket.
30 High Court Judges attended 'Family and Foster Care Alternatives' Training Conference.
1 Abused and disadvantaged girls institution received a bakery and equipment
1 Outdoor classroom was built in an institution to benefit 100 disadvantaged girls
Alternative Family and Foster Care Training was delivered to key staff at the Women’s Development Centre in Kandy.
100 abandoned boys and girls benefit from a library and classroom which was built in a mixed orphanage for up to 18 years
30 Girls benefit from a new dormitory, showers and toilets in an institution
13 Children in 6 families were reunited or directly prevented from abandonment and supported with housing, emergency supplies and education.
Three Families became fully self-sufficient with income generation equipment.
100 Families affected by flooding received emergency food, water and clothing.
170 Parents attended TFT workshops on health, nutrition and child protection.
250 Villagers enjoyed our 'Bringing Communities Together' New Year Festival.
3 TFT houses built with clean water and electricity for homeless families
20 Mothers attended Income Generation and financial management workshops to empower mothers of vulnerable children and those in orphanages.
3 Houses were renovated and roofs repaired to ensure clean water and child safety
3 Disabled children in rural areas were given wheelchairs
We help families bring
their children home in Sri Lanka
We work with international donors, governments and communities, and encourage them to redirect funds from orphanages to provide health, education and social services in the community, so more children can be raised in loving families. We train professionals to deliver better care and support. We transform social care systems to find ways to stop unnecessary child abandonment. We help families to bring their children home.
OUR APPROACH
Our aim is to improve opportunities for children by helping to keep poor families together and ensure their education. Reunite children abandoned through poverty with their own or foster families and meanwhile help raise standards in children's institutions.
All of our programmes are centred around three core pillars
Providing Education, Transforming institutions and Bringing and Keeping Families together.
Our comprehensive and holistic approach targets the grassroots level, to promote family care in Sri Lanka, support families to prevent abandonment, ensure the education of children to prevent the cycle of poverty and introduce a foster care system so that every child can reclaim their human right to grow up in a family. From birth to adulthood, we reunite, educate, support and strengthen disadvantaged and forgotten children and families of all faiths.
Our solution-based model to help end the institutionalisation of children consists of a variety of projects such as: a preschool to provide low-cost and free early learning intervention and childcare, school books and resource packs to children from poor families; donating commercial sewing machines to help single mothers work from home to support their families; hosts free training sessions in literacy, numeracy, financial management and bag making; trains local and national childcare services in alternative family and foster care;
TFT advocates that ‘Children Belong in Loving Families, Not Orphanages’ and campaigns to raise awareness of the long-term emotional and physical harm caused, not as a gesture of charity, but an act of human justice which says that every child matters and deserves to be loved and educated in a family setting.
Through specific development projects to support people’s needs, TFT aims to directly provide the knowledge, resources and tools to improve conditions in orphanages, prevent abandonment, strengthen families and bring about sustainable change in the community and nationally.
TRANSFORMING INSTITUTIONS
Collaborating with global partners we provide training to National Childcare services, the judiciary, law students, universities, civil society organizations, NGO's, local communities, faith groups and parents to end institutionalization and offer family care alternatives.
In the meantime, we improve care and conditions by employing and training housemothers in hygiene, health, nutrition and how to better stimulate the children, for more successful reintegration into families and society. We also provide disabled children with physio and speech therapy and supply sports equipment, arrange activity days, vocational training and employment opportunities for older institutionalized children while we work towards finding them a family.
BRINGING AND
KEEPING FAMILIES TOGETHER
We assess children in the orphanage, identify those that have potential family relationships. Work with the government to seek out the parent or relative to assess their health, living situation, work status and support system. Where safe and possible we assist the family with re-adoption through the courts, establish the children in local schools, and provide housing and support until the reunited family can reach self-sufficiency and independence.
When the child cannot be reunited with their family, we work with social workers to find possible foster families.
PROVIDING EDUCATION
We recognize that in poverty-stricken areas education becomes a luxury, not a basic right. To date, TFT has ensured that more than 16,000 children from both the institutions and the local community have access to education and vocational training by providing them with the often unaffordable uniforms; books; bags; pens and pencils. TFT International Preschool offers quality education to up to 85 children and parents are learning from their children's books, as well as English, child protection and sustainability. It also provides parents with a place to learn about health, hygiene, sustainability and is a safe place to leave their children while they work.
THE PROBLEM
Most children in orphanages have families. Families who simply need a little help to keep them together.
OUR IMPACT
Thanks to Their Future Today thousands of children are in school and dozens have been helped by preventing families from separating and reuniting those that have.
OUR APPROACH
We improve opportunities for children by ensuring their education and by helping to keep their families together. We reunite children abandoned through poverty with their own families or find them foster families, as well as helping to raise standards in children's institutions.
through income generation strengthening, empowerment, education, vocational training and family support to help eradicate abandonment through poverty for future generations.
Their Future Today
works holistically towards improving care and conditions for children while they are in orphanages
We bring and keep families together and introduce Alternative Family Care solutions so that one day
All children will have the right to grow up in a family, and no child will be left behind.
We are successfully
to
reunites children and strengthens families to become sustainable and prevent abandonment
for Every child deserves the right to grow up in a safe and loving family.
Every child deserves Their Future Today
existing without love or basic care and nearly all have a family.
We reunite children in orphanages with their families or look for safe loving Alternative Family Care solutions so that no child gets left behind.
s a UK and Sri Lankan based charity working from the grassroots up to improve the lives of forgotten children in orphanages and families disadvantaged through poverty.
With your continued help, one day every child will have the right to grow up happily in a loving family and harmful orphanages will be eliminated for good.
2500 Children in poor families received books, enabling them to go to school annually.
100 Institutionalised young people received vocational training in IT & Sewing.
80 Young adults and children earned qualifications in IT & Sewing.
15 Institutionalised girls received training in child care, health, and nutrition.
27 Law students received training in 'Alternative Family Based Care'.
One preschool was opened to accommodate the need for affordable quality preschooling for the rural community.
100 Institutionalised girls received art therapy sessions
Four children benefit from free pre-schooling places.
Three Braille machines were donated to a school for disabled children and to a blind teacher who works 3 different schools around the Southern Province in Sri Lanka.
ENABLING EDUCATION
20 Carers are employed to raise standards of
health & care in an orphanage.
85 Abandoned babies and children under 5 are receiving quality care to prepare for their reunification into their own families or foster families.
One orphanage preschool has been set up to ensure 30 young children get essential education.
One physiotherapist and speech therapist is employed.
12 Severely disabled children now stand, walk, run, jump, speak, and count.
200 Social and probation workers were trained by TFT global partners in 'Family and Foster Care Alternatives'.
100 Children in an institution received 20 bags of cricket equipment so they could play cricket.
Three Children were given wheelchairs to support families who could not afford it.
45 Judges attended our 'Family and Foster Care Alternatives' conference.
One girls institution received bakery equipment and one new outdoor classroom.
TRANSFORMING
INSTITUTIONAL CARE
13 Children in 6 families were reunited or directly prevented from abandonment and supported with housing, emergency supplies and education.
Three families became fully self-sufficient with income generation equipment.
100 Families affected by flooding received emergency food, water and clothing.
170 Parents attended our workshops on health, nutrition and child protection.
250 Villagers enjoyed our 'Bringing Communities Together' New Year Festival.
Two houses was built with clean water and electricity for a homeless family.
20 Mothers attended an Income Generation workshop to empower mothers of vulnerable children and those in orphanages.
Three houses were renovated to ensure clean water and child safety.