An Official Step To Reunifying More Kids To Their Families In Honduras!
One of the biggest obstacles that has prevented kids from being reunited with their families has been a severe lack of staff in the child welfare offices.
An understaffed office simply cannot support and manage cases for the thousands of kids living in orphanages, and the limited staff's workload is focused on emergency needs (mainly placing kids in orphanages when a report is placed about a child's wellbeing) rather than working for kid's permanency.
Without a social worker nobody is conducting home studies to confirm families have the physical and economic conditions needed to provide the care kids deserve.
Without a psychologist families cannot be properly evaluated to ensure they are safe people who will provide a safe home for their kids.
Without a lawyer the legal process of reviewing the findings of these evaluations from the social worker and psychologist and reestablishing legal custody to a child's biological family cannot happen.
We have seen firsthand how often families remain separated simply because they are waiting on a visit or meeting with one of these child welfare professionals. We have partnered with loving families who have done everything they can to get their kids back home, only to find themselves waiting for months, and even years for paperwork to be finished to get their kids home.
The regional child welfare office we work with has never had this multidisciplinary team dedicated specifically to reintegrations UNTIL NOW!
Over the last few months, our team has worked alongside the National Child Welfare Office to create an agreement that will remove this obstacle of an understaffed office from the path of so many kids who’s cases are dependent on them.
Yesterday morning, our team signed the official legal document alongside Dr. Lizeth Coello, the National Director of the Honduran Child Welfare Office, which states that we as an organization will provide our regional child welfare office with a full team of these three professionals dedicated to evaluating and ultimately reuniting kids with their safe and empowered families.
Our team at Embraced will continue to work with and invest directly in families that our staff in the child welfare office will identify as needing support. Our mission will always be to remove obstacles that stand in the way of families getting their kids back home. This agreement simply allows us to remove the biggest obstacle currently standing in the way for so many families while also making our process of finding and removing unique obstacles for individual families significantly more efficient.
Adding three staff to our team is one of the largest ongoing financial commitments we have ever made as a nonprofit. This will add a monthly cost of just over $3,000 to our budget which was a decision we did not take lightly.
However, when we consider our goal as an organization — to see every child in Honduras have the opportunity to grow up with a loving family — it’s an investment we are excited to make.
If you have more questions about this decision and would like to know more details about how this process will work moving forward, please feel free to reach out! We would love to talk more with you about this.
If you would like to partner with us and be a key reason why we’re able to have the staff and provide the resources needed to make family possible for kids in Honduras, you can donate using the link below OR reach out! We would love to talk with you about what your support could mean for our mission.