Advocacy for Children and Youth Social Development Services

Our Advocacy for Children and Youth Social Development focuses on creating supportive policies and practices that promote the holistic development of young people, ensuring they have the resources and opportunities to thrive in all aspects of life. Through our Advocacy efforts, we work to influence policies and practices that affect the well-being of children at risk of losing parental care, ensuring they can fully enjoy their rights and have equal opportunities to be included in society. 

OUR CARE SOLUTIONS

Based on our care principles, our SOS Children’s Villages actively promote and support quality care in the following ways.

 

We offer alternative care

If the family of origin is not the best place for a child to grow up, we offer alternative care. Our core solution is SOS family care for children who require longer term care. We constantly keep improving our work with SOS families and use our experience and competence to explore other relevant care solutions, together with partners. If it is in the best interests of a child to return to the family of origin, we actively support this. We deliver all options at consistently high quality and adapt them to the local context. 

 

We strengthen families

In many cases, the family of origin is still able to offer a loving home to their children, despite challenging circumstances. We support vulnerable families to overcome these challenges and prevent them from breaking down. We do this by strengthening their ability to care for their children, through working directly with families or empowering communities to do so.This also includes kinship care to support children to live with their extended family. In humanitarian emergency situations too, we focus on prevention of family separation and family reunification.

 

We advocate for quality care

Beyond the children we reach directly through alternative care and family strengthening, we advocate for quality care on local, national and international level. Working with governments, communities and other relevant stakeholders, we promote the delivery of quality care and call for improvements in policy and practice.

 

OUR CARE SPIRIT

When implementing our care solutions, we always work in the spirit of our four values.

 

COURAGE

We take action

We challenge conventional thinking and practices and innovate our work to remain a true pioneer in child care. In response to the different realities across the globe, we continuously adapt our services to the local context and strive to maximise our impact on each child and their communities.

COMMITMENT

We keep our promise

We make a long-term commitment to children and young people and ensure that our work is sustainable in the communities where we work. We stand strongly behind our actions and positions for children without adequate parental care and deliver quality services that help them succeed in life.

TRUST

We believe in each other

We work as one team of co-workers, volunteers, partners and supporters; because we know that joint efforts bring the best results. We believe in each other’s abilities and potential, share our knowledge, and support each other to implement our mission.

ACCOUNTABILITY

We are reliable partners

We are accountable to children and our greatest responsibility is to guarantee the quality of care. Therefore, we ensure high standards as stated in the SOS Care Guarantee. Across the organisation, we work in a spirit of quality, efficiency and transparency in all our actions and in managing our resources.