HOME 3: a new phase for child protection in Sierra Leone

On August 27 in Freetown, government representatives, AVSI staff, local partners, and members of the participating communities gathered for the official launch of the HOME 3 project, the latest phase of a journey that began in previous years to strengthen the protection of vulnerable children in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire.

During the launch event, AVSI's Country Representative in Sierra Leone, Gianni Bagaglia, highlighted how the organization has been working alongside national institutions on child protection issues for nearly thirty years.

Approximately four million children live in Sierra Leone, and a significant proportion face vulnerabilities linked to family circumstances, economic hardship, or limited access to child-focused services. Within this context, the various phases of the HOME project have worked to strengthen referral, case management, and care mechanisms for vulnerable children, involving both families and public institutions responsible for child protection.

The first phase of the project, launched in 2021 in the Western Area Rural District, involved the Child Welfare Department, local Child Welfare Committees, primary school teachers, and residential care facilities. Activities included training 20 foster families and placing 20 children in protective family environments. Around 300 families practicing menpikin, the traditional form of informal kinship care widely used in the country, were also engaged.

In 2023, HOME 2 focused on monitoring children placed in foster care and strengthening foster family training, while consolidating collaboration with the Family Support Unit, the police division dedicated to child protection.

One of the key topics highlighted during the launch event was menpikin, a traditional practice through which a child is informally taken into the care of another family within the community.

According to Charles Bockarie Vandi, Director General of the Ministry of Gender and Children's Affairs, this form of care has long represented a common response to children's needs. However, precisely because of its informal nature, it has rarely been integrated into structured child protection programmes.

HOME 3 aims to address this gap by working alongside communities and institutions to identify situations of vulnerability, register the most complex cases, and support families in accessing safer care arrangements that are better connected to public services.

Coordinated by AVSI and funded by the CAI - Italian Commission for International Adoptions, HOME 3 builds on the work carried out in recent years in Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire together with the authorized agencies CIAI - Centro Italiano Aiuti all'Infanzia, AMI - Amici Missioni Indiane, and the Sierra Leonean partner Family Homes Movement (FHM).

This new phase, lasting 18 months, brings the experience developed in Western Area Rural to the neighbouring Western Area Urban, one of the country's most densely populated areas. The project will involve the Ministry of Social Welfare, the Ministry of Gender and Children's Affairs, the Child Welfare Department, the police Family Support Unit, ten residential care facilities, child protection committees, and approximately 300 community members.

The intervention will focus on identifying children living in particularly vulnerable situations, strengthening foster care pathways, and improving collaboration among public services, residential care facilities, and community-based actors.

In the coming months, activities will begin in selected communities and care institutions across Western Area Urban. Project staff will map the most complex cases, support the identification of foster families, and accompany foster care placements through coordinated work between social services and local structures.

Part of the intervention will also be dedicated to consolidating the procedures developed during previous phases of the project, with particular attention to case referral systems, the monitoring of children in care, and cooperation between community-based bodies and the institutions responsible for child protection.

The overall objective is to ensure a faster, more coordinated response for children in need of protection.