title: The Right to Alternative Care for Children in Tanzania : An Inquiry into the Law and Practice of Foster Care
Creators: name: Buchumi, Veronica Gabriel
Publisher: name: University of Bayreuth
Year: 2021
Subjects: subject: Children deprived of their family environment
subject: alternative care
subject: foster care
subject: 340

description: Children need to grow up in a loving and caring family environment for their development. In the absence of such an environment, children become vulnerable to violations of their rights, hence the need for alternative care, preferably family-based, for children deprived of their family environment. The right to appropriate alternative care for children is guaranteed under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child of 1990, both ratified by Tanzania in 1991 and 2003, respectively. Mainland Tanzania domesticated these treaties through the Law of the Child Act in 2009, in which the need for alternative care for children deprived of their family environment is reflected, with an emphasis on family-based alternative care rather than institutional care. However, in practice, institutional care is prevalent in Tanzania. The limited use of foster care as one of the family-based alternative care options to protect children deprived of their family environment necessitated this study that assesses the place of foster care in the continuum of child care in Mainland Tanzania. In this study, foster care, as distinct from informal traditional kinship care, refers to a form of family-based care, to be ordered and supervised by the competent social welfare authority, where a child deprived of his or her family environment is placed in the home of a carer who is selected, approved and supervised by the authority to provide such care. However, in Tanzania, foster care is understood and used in practice merely as a prerequisite for adoption rather than an independent form of alternative care as provided in the laws. On the other hand, with the so-called fit person programme, a short-term variation of foster care is applied without relating it to foster care. Therefore, the study examines the efficiency and effectiveness in practice of the legal framework regulating foster care and other forms of protection of children deprived of their family environment. By analysing the relevant legal and policy documents and conducting interviews with selected respondents, the challenges and prospects of foster care as family-based alternative care in Mainland Tanzania were unravelled in the light of the international and regional standards and principles on the right to alternative care, such as the principles of necessity and suitability. The narrow definition of foster care in the Law of the Child Act limited to care by non-relatives, lack of clarity on the objectives and uses of foster care, and lack of coherence of the Law of the Child Act and the regulations made under it stand out as the major legal challenges resulting in the limited use of foster care. Against this background, the study analyses the actual role of the social welfare officers in the protection of children, as well as child-care traditions and culture of Tanzanians, and poverty as critical practical challenges affecting the use of foster care in Tanzania. As a result, the study contends that existing campaigns to deinstitutionalise alternative care in favour of family-based care, the need for a case-by-case analysis of children’s needs, and flexibility in the practice of foster care provide prospects for a functioning foster care system in Tanzania. The study emphasises that adopting a holistic approach looking at the whole system of protection of children is essential in developing a desired foster care system as foster care cannot be a solution on its own. The study calls for a reform of the legal framework on child protection and a concretisation of the right to alternative care within the legal framework.