The Ministry of Human Development today launched its campaign to generate awareness about foster children and more importantly recruit families to adopt them.
A perennial front-runner for the causes of at risk children, Ava Pennil says that children need love and affection from families, not a foster home.
Ava Pennil,
"While we house(sic) children who come into our care at the institution, the institution is not the best place for children. They need to be in homes to experience family life, they need to experience positive experiences because many of these children come from broken home and dysfunctional families and all they know in their life is that a dysfunctional unit and we need to expose them positive family life. We need people that are willing to give love to children because children do much better in foster care than in the institution."
"We are asking families to come forward and if you can't take a child for the rest of their life you can take them for the weekend or day. All those options are open just give the child a release from the institution."
"How you apply is that you make an application with the institution and it's a basic interview and we'll interview the major members of your family to ensure everyone is on board. There are some limitations of course, we won't take people that have criminal records because the child has to be safe."
There are 400 children who are under the Ministry's care. 300 live in homes and 100 are in institutions. 20 of them are up for adoption.