In the face of poverty, parents can show unstinting resilience and courage on behalf of their children, making enormous efforts to safeguard relationships and keep the family together. This study shows what ATD Fourth World has learnt about the fight against poverty from its grassroots action with families, and from that of other NGOs, in the Philippines, Burkina Faso, Haiti, Guatemala, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Executive summary excerpt

No one wants children to suffer the harshness of life in poverty. This can drive some parents to entrust their children to an orphanage or to work in domestic service. It can lead some social workers to remove children from a home because their family is poor. There are times when these are the best options available: the children will be better fed and the parents may have the time to overcome a crisis and build a more stable home. Outcomes are far worse when children leave of their own accord and end up on their own in the streets. But even in the best of circumstances, what children themselves say time and again is that they know something irreplaceable has been lost when they leave their families and communities. Children in the custody of private institutions or the government are likely to find themselves in a system with scant resources that is seldom held accountable to the families they serve. We owe it to these children to innovate better solutions together.

Poverty is not the only factor separating parents and children. The phenomena explored in this study—that affect children living in the streets, in foster care, and in other difficult situations—are complex and will not be resolved by any single measure. Parents themselves often show unstinting resilience and courage on behalf of their children. But the enormous efforts necessary to keep a family together in the face of poverty also sap people’s energies and hopes in ways that can delay and even sabotage their attempts to escape poverty.

Safeguarding parent-child relationships is a question of human rights. The Convention on the Rights of the Child affirms that it is in the overriding interest of children that they be brought up in their own families. It envisages separation as the last possible step after doing everything that can be done to support parents in their responsibilities.

Committing to defend the rights of children and families is only the first step. Implementing change requires training, planning, methodology and evaluation that is developed in partnership with children and families themselves. This begins with a focus on people as active participants in development. Priority must be given to support the efforts made by the very poorest people.

The six countries profiled in this study

• In the situations examined in Guatemala, some very poor families lack community support. Too many children end up in the streets, with some of them in prostitution. Other children in formal structures find themselves marginalized by their extreme poverty, as when school administrators humiliate them for having lice and worn out clothing. Still other children find themselves in situations where they have access to drugs and become addicted. Meanwhile, parents live with the fear of their children being kidnapped for adoption. Faced with such overwhelming challenges, these parents make enormous efforts to protect their children as best they can.
• In Haiti, the situation of children in domestic service has recently been in the spotlight. It is important to look at all aspects of this issue. While the ideal situation would be for children’s families to have sufficient means to raise them at home, until that goal can be achieved, it is important to distinguish between varying situations of domestic service. While some are highly exploitative of the child, in other situations, a child may simply be helping out neighbors who have the means to welcome her or him until the child’s family has more food or the means to send the child to school. A network of three schools in the rural community of Fond-des-Nègres offers a practical model for ensuring the education of some of the poorest children—both those in domestic service and those at risk of going into domestic service.
• The chapters on the Philippines, the United States, and the United Kingdom, give complementary views of families whose children are in the custody of social services. Life and economic realities are very different on these three continents. The parents profiled in the Philippines chapter were more likely to voluntarily entrust their children to orphanages in hopes that they would thrive better in that environment
  than at home. Although the institutional and legal frameworks vary in these countries, it is striking to notice the similarities among parents who are faced with a series of obstacles to overcome. Too often, the outcome is despair. A child in the United States blames her parents for not having been able to protect her from the child welfare system; a child in the Philippines runs away from an orphanage to find her parents. These are symptoms of institutions gone awry. And yet, there are also important ways in which institutions can strengthen children and families. The Child Welfare Organizing Project (in the U.S.) proposes an approach that enables parents to examine issues together and contribute to the analysis and planning of the child welfare system.
• The children living on city streets in Burkina Faso have often been going in circles. They suffer from the rootlessness inherent in their lives and the risks to their health and well-being that result from fending for themselves. Institutions designed for their benefit have helped to protect some, but they have also left many of these children disoriented, not knowing how they can grow up to participate in their community. Here, the work of the Courtyard of 100 Trades is an innovative model demonstrating how it is possible to reintegrate these children into the lives of their families and mostly rural communities.

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