Alternative Care
A Difficult Year, A Hopeful Future
Read CIF’s 2024 Annual Impact Report. Despite global crises and funding challenges, we strengthened partnerships, expanded OSCaR, and saw 250% growth in donor giving. CIF’s 2024 Annual Impact Report reflects a year of resilience and transformation. Despite financial challenges, donor losses, and global crises, CIF remained steadfast in its mission to keep children safe in families. The report highlights strengthened government partnerships, expanded use of our OSCaR case management system, and a 250% increase in individual giving. Alongside key data, we share powerful stories of change made possible through your support.
Lost in translation: Part 2 Bridging the Khmer/English language gap
Earlier this week, we explored why the language used in social work matters. We looked at all the reasons why we at CIF insist on Cambodian social workers for Cambodian clients. If CIF believes so passionately in doing Khmer language based work with our clients, what do we do about working with organisations and people who…
Finding A New Family: How CIF recruits our foster parents
Frequently, when the terms “Foster Care” or “Emergency Care” are spoken about within many Western nations, a myriad of negative experiences and stories surface. People picture children uprooted time and time again. Children shuffled through a system, clutching a garbage bag to their chest filled with their only personal belongings. Children in Families (CIF) takes…
Infant Mental Health: An Interview With Mother’s Heart Organization
Vital Infant Years The early years of infants are vital to mental health throughout a lifetime. Studies are showing how impactful even the first few months of growth is in babies. Those months shape how their brain forms connections and develops. This is why nations are beginning to recognize mental health for infants through initiatives…
Child Protection as a driving value: A Chat with CIF’s Program Director and Kinship Care Manager
Child Protection is at the heart of everything CIF does. Earlier this month we sat down with Naomy, our Programs Director and Menghong, the Kinship Care Project Manager, to discuss the importance of child protection in our Kinship Care and Foster Care projects. We invite you today to be part of this conversation. The Importance…
Lucky to be fostering: One family’s journey to becoming CIF Foster parents
Maly and Nhean are like many Cambodian rural couples. They are well established members of their community, known and respected by their neighbors and involved in community life. They are subsistence farmers who supplement their income during the year with extra jobs. Nhean works as motodop – a motorbike taxi ferrying neighbors and visitors to…
OSCaR in Myanmar: Providing Technical Support for like-minded organisations
In late March, two of CIF’s staff members travelled to Yangon, Myanmar, to provide training to two organisations on how to use OSCaR. Project Manager Sam Ol, and Chris, the Social Work Technical Adviser, spent three days with staff from Kinnected and from Compasio. The organisations work with vulnerable children in Myanmar and along the…
Celebrating Purple Day: A Child’s experience of Epilepsy in Cambodia
Sreypich and her foster family greet us with smiles as we ride our motos into their front yard. Today our ABLE staff have come for a visit to see how Sreypich is going. Sreypich has epilepsy and over the last seven months, ABLE has been working with her foster family to ensure that she is…
Discover Family Based Care
Research shows that voluntourism to orphanages is harmful to children growing up in those institutions. Voluntourism refers to when people combine tourism with the desire to make a difference. They want to serve the people they have been visiting, often by volunteering at an orphanage. Despite their good intentions, this practice increases child protection and…
Beauty in Muddy Waters
The mud comes up to mid-calf height. It is thick and sticky, leaving a dark brown coating on every surface it touches. We step hesitantly, searching for a firm footing, but our feet only sink further. Fortunately, the muddy path only lasts about three meters. Unfortunately, it is the only way in and out of…
Celebrating ‘Anne with an E’ Part 2: Resilience and Reintegration
Myth #1: Orphans are inherently resilient and institutionalised children can easily reintegrate into society. Last post we introduced the idea that orphans are a central part of Western popular culture. If you missed it, you can find it here. We talked about how the words often used to talk about orphans evoke a strong sense…
Celebrating ‘Anne with an E’: Orphans in Popular Culture
Part One: An Introduction to Orphans in Popular Culture Ludwig Wittgenstein once said “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” Our language shapes our perceptions of what life is like, what our values are and the way we understand the world. The language we use matters. The way we tell stories…
Children in Families is a Stars Impact Award Winner for 2016!
Super Exciting! We are super, super excited to be able to make this announcement: Children in Families has been named as a winner of the Stars Impact Awards for 2016! Any award is great news, of course. But this one is something special. The Stars Impact Awards are given each year to “strong, grassroots organisations…
The ABLE Program and the Staff Who Make It Happen
We would like to introduce you to the staff who work in our ABLE program. Meet Lisa. She is a Physical Therapist, and has worked at CIF for the past four years. Her time here has seen the beginning and growth of the ABLE program. She now serves as a technical adviser to our Khmer staff. ABLE ABLE…
Trauma and Health: Address One, Help the Other
It is so damaging it can trim 20 years off of life expectancy. It disrupts brain development, immunity, hormones, and even DNA transcription. It is childhood trauma. In the linked TEDTalk, Dr. Nadine Burke, who serves in a community with low income children and families, addresses a study by Dr.s Vincent Felitti and Robert Anda…
Kinship for Samnant
*Follow our CIF staff narrative on a field visit to check-in on a Kinship Care Family outside of bustling Phnom Penh. Names have been changed to protect identities.* “Do you want to go with me on a family visit?” My coworker, our Kinship Care Program Manager, peered at me from behind his computer. “Yes,…
Attachment And Bonding
A Safe Place – Attachment and Bonding We all need and long for a safe place – a location or person giving us space to wholly be ourselves and find comfort. Most people realize that they need relationships in which safety and freedom of identity exist. Clinicians call this attachment and bonding. But what happens…
What’s in an Orphan Photo?
THE ORPHAN PHOTO Iranian photographer and artist, Bahareh Bisheh, took this captivating image of his little cousin after she had fallen asleep on the pavement outside their home. The photograph took the social media world by storm, the story of this “orphan photo” evolving into an orphan missing her mother. REMINDER AND RESPONSE The incredibly…