As Africa continues to strengthen efforts to ensure every child grows up in a safe and nurturing family environment, the need for stronger child protection systems remains urgent. The Continental Study on Children Without Parental Care in Africa estimates that 35 million children across the continent are living without parental care. These findings underscore the importance of strengthening families, communities, and national child protection systems to ensure every child receives the care and support they need.
Against this backdrop, government representatives, child protection experts, representatives of the participating SOS Children’s Villages Member Associations from Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi, development partners, and representatives from the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) gathered in Addis Ababa from 29–31 July 2026 for the Multi-Country Care Reform (MCCR) Framework Programme Revision and Recalibration Workshop. Convened by SOS Children's Villages in Ethiopia and in collaboration and coordination with SOS Children's Villages Worldwide and SOS Children's Villages International, the workshop provided a platform to review, refine and recalibrate the programme framework ahead of its endorsement and implementation.
With a total budget of €7.5 million over a three-year implementation period, the programme is financed by SOS Children’s Villages Worldwide and SOS Children’s Villages Denmark to advance care reform through strengthened policies, transformed childcare systems, workforce development and regional collaboration.
Opening the workshop, H.E. Mrs. Hikma Keyeradin Mohamed, Ethiopia's State Minister for Women and Children Affairs, reaffirmed the Government of Ethiopia's commitment to ensuring that every child grows up in a safe, nurturing and supportive family environment. She highlighted Ethiopia's progress in strengthening legal, policy and institutional frameworks that prioritize family and community-based care while recognizing residential care as a measure of last resort. She also acknowledged the longstanding partnership with SOS Children's Villages in Ethiopia, which has contributed to key national milestones, including the development of the Alternative Child Care Directive, National Minimum Care Leaving Standards, the draft Child Act, support for the Child Protection Information Management System (CPIMS+), assessments of childcare institutions and broader efforts to strengthen evidence-based decision-making and care reform.
Welcoming participants, Sahlemariam Abebe, Multi-Country Director for SOS Children's Villages in Ethiopia and South Sudan, described care reform as far more than a strategic priority, calling it both a moral obligation and a national imperative. He encouraged participants to use the workshop to reflect on existing strengths, learn from one another and collectively shape a stronger future for children across Africa. He also reminded delegates that care reform is not about replacing one model of care with another, but about strengthening the systems that protect children and support families.
Providing technical leadership throughout the workshop, Eyob Berhanu, Senior Advisor for Program Quality, Development and Care Reforms at SOS Children’s Villages International, guided participants through the strategic direction and key components of the Multi-Country Care Reform Framework. He highlighted the four core objectives of the framework: advancing policy reform, supporting the transformation of childcare institutions, strengthening the capacity of the social service workforce, and establishing a continental knowledge hub known as iCARE. The hub will serve as a platform for innovation, capacity building, advocacy, evidence generation and knowledge exchange to advance care reform across participating countries.
Following the strategic direction presented by Eyob, Maria Berenguer Labaig, Innovation, Evidence & Scale (IES) Director at SOS Children’s Villages International, facilitated the key phase of the workshop by guiding participants through the reflection and recalibration process. Drawing on IES expertise in evidence, learning and programme quality, Maria supported country teams as they reviewed and refined key elements of the framework, including programme approaches, expected results and implementation considerations. Through structured discussions, critical reflection and collaborative problem-solving, she helped participants identify opportunities to strengthen the framework, ensuring that it remained evidence-informed, adaptable to diverse country contexts and positioned to support meaningful outcomes for children.
Building on this foundation, representatives from Benin, Ethiopia, Kenya and Malawi worked together to review the programme’s results framework, implementation approach and proposed targets to ensure they remained child-centred, evidence-informed and responsive to national priorities. Discussions focused on ensuring that the framework was both ambitious and practical, while recognizing that each country is progressing through different stages of the care reform journey. Participants acknowledged that differences in policy development, government readiness, institutional capacity and national contexts require approaches that are adaptable rather than based on a single model. The discussions emphasized the importance of ensuring that the revised programme reflects each country's realities while contributing to a shared regional vision for care reform.
As part of the refinement process, technical experts contributed reflections on fundamental principles that should guide implementation and strengthen the programme’s impact.
Sara Tabit, Global Gender Advisor for Programme Quality and Development Support at SOS Children’s Villages International and ESAF, emphasized the importance of applying a gender-responsive and gender-transformative lens throughout the care reform process. She highlighted that gender considerations should be embedded across programme design, implementation, monitoring and learning processes.
She emphasized the importance of strengthening the capacity of care professionals and social workers, integrating gender considerations into Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) systems, applying gender markers and generating evidence to support inclusive and effective care reform approaches.
Coenraad de Beer, Head of Child and Youth Care Practitioner Support, Research, Development and Innovation at SOS Children’s Villages International, emphasized that care reform must remain grounded in children’s relationships, connections and sense of belonging. He highlighted relational care as a fundamental element of children’s wellbeing, stressing that reform should not only focus on systems and structures but also protect and strengthen the supportive relationships that enable children to feel safe, valued and connected.
Coenraad further emphasized the importance of strengthening caregivers, social workers and care professionals, promoting relational care approaches, improving referral pathways and ensuring that children’s voices and perspectives meaningfully inform programmes and decisions affecting them.
Through the review process, participants also reached on a shared understanding that care reform should not be equated with deinstitutionalization alone. While reducing unnecessary reliance on residential care remains an important objective, delegates emphasized that meaningful care reform is fundamentally about transforming systems so that children and families receive the support they need before separation occurs.
The discussions further highlighted the importance of prevention services, effective gatekeeping mechanisms, quality family-based care, a well-supported social service workforce and strong government leadership, all grounded in the principle of the child's best interests. Participants agreed that the revised framework should strengthen the full continuum of care available to children and families while ensuring that every intervention remains child centered.
Representing the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, Hon. Anne Musiwa commended the timely convening of the workshop, describing care reform as both a child rights imperative and an African development priority. She emphasized the importance of strengthening existing family and kinship care systems, ensuring the meaningful participation of care leavers in shaping policy and programmes, and maintaining residential care only as a measure of last resort within a broader continuum of quality care.
Delegates also advanced plans for establishing a regional Knowledge Hub to generate evidence, facilitate learning and strengthen collaboration across participating countries. The platform is expected to support governments and practitioners by documenting lessons, promoting peer learning and informing future policy and programme implementation across the continent. As part of this effort, SOS Children’s Villages International, through its IES function, will continue to provide support in strengthening evidence and learning practices, developing and sharing relevant tools and resources, facilitating capacity strengthening and enabling cross-federation exchange. Through the Knowledge Hub, IES will contribute to creating mechanisms that allow countries to capture learning, share experiences, and use evidence to continuously strengthen care reform approaches.
Reflecting on the workshop's purpose, Dr. Deepmala Mahla Chief Operating Officer (COO) and IDS Lead reaffirmed three core commitments underpinning the programme: designing interventions around children's priorities, making a long-term commitment to governments through partnership and accountability, and fostering a culture of honest learning within SOS Children's Villages so that decisions continue to be informed by evidence, context and experience.
Closing the discussions, Prof. Sabina Schutter, SOS Children’s Villages Worldwide Executive Board Member, called on the federation to continue reinventing itself by drawing on its global network, collective knowledge and evidence to support countries on their care reform journeys. She reminded participants that an exclusive focus on deinstitutionalization risks losing sight of what matters most, the individual child, and stressed that every reform effort should ultimately be measured by its contribution to each child's wellbeing.
By the conclusion of the workshop, delegates had refined the strategic direction of the Multi-Country Care Reform Framework Programme, strengthened partnership and governance arrangements, and agreed on a roadmap towards implementation.
The Addis Ababa workshop marks an important milestone in shaping an African approach to care reform, one that recognizes that while every country's journey will be different, lasting change depends on strong government leadership, regional collaboration and sustained investment in families and communities. It also reaffirmed Ethiopia's leadership in advancing care reform across the continent and provided a platform for governments, regional institutions and partners to work together towards a shared goal: ensuring that every child grows up with the care, protection and support of a family.