From 5 to 11 October, Family for Every Child members around the world are marking Global Kinship Care Week 2026. The activities look different in every country, but they are connected by a shared aim: to make sure kinship care is better understood, recognised and supported.
What members are doing
Members are using the week to ask what needs to change, and their plans point to a shared set of answers.
- Securing formal recognition for kinship care. Kinship care remains largely outside formal systems, so much of the work centres on clearer national guidance, legal protection for carers and guardianship that families can secure.
- Building evidence from lived experience. Members are gathering evidence from carers, children and fathers, and taking it to policymakers, courts and government agencies.
- Working through frontline workers to reach families. Social workers and community staff feature throughout as the link between kinship families and the support they need.
- Easing the financial and parenting pressures on carers. Plans address the cost of raising a child on limited means and the need for parenting support that includes relatives.
- Engaging the leaders who influence family life. Members are bringing traditional, faith and community leaders into the conversation, given their influence on how families are supported.
- Making overlooked children visible. Several members are drawing attention to children with disabilities, children of migrant workers, survivors of exploitation and children with relatives overseas.
The summaries below, grouped by region, show how each member is putting these priorities into practice.
Africa
Egypt: Hope Village Society. Hope Village has been reuniting children with their relatives since 1988. Many extended families are poor, and some decline to take a child in for that reason. This year Hope Village is working towards a national kinship care alliance of NGOs, child protection agencies and religious leaders, with government approval as the target by October 2027. During the week it is hosting a roundtable for around 40 stakeholders, meeting NGOs and international donors, and engaging media. Its plan also includes a shared database for NGOs, small loans for caregivers, and an online page for the new alliance, aimed at families in Cairo and Alexandria.
Kenya: Pendekezo Letu. Kinship care is Kenya's most common form of alternative care, and the one with the least formal recognition. The government has started drafting national Kinship Care Guidelines, and Pendekezo Letu wants to keep that process moving. It is convening a National Technical Working Group with the State Department for Children Services, the National Council for Children's Services, the judiciary and civil society. It is also running a workshop to help civil society organisations take on policy and budget advocacy and agree joint position papers, alongside radio, television and online interviews.
Liberia: Children Assistance Program (CAP). CAP's work in Liberia centres on one district. It is holding community awareness sessions for community leaders, child welfare committee members, parents, kinship carers and children, and distributing printed materials with kinship care messages. Media coverage across radio, print and social media and meetings with relevant officials is part of the plan.
Rwanda: Uyisenga ni Imanzi. Many children Uyisenga ni Imanzi supports are raised by grandparents and relatives on very little money. Its campaign combines practical help with advocacy. Fifty children in kinship care are receiving school materials, school meals and help with fees, and taking part in a creative arts workshop where they describe their experiences through drawing and storytelling. A round-table is bringing together mental health professionals, policymakers, caregivers, children and local leaders. Four advocacy meetings with the Ministry of Gender and Family Promotion and the National Child Development Agency are planned, along with a radio talk show, community storytelling videos and a social media campaign with an influencer.
South Africa: Children in Distress Network (CINDI). Grandmothers carry much of the daily work of kinship care in South Africa. Fathers whose children live with relatives are far less visible. CINDI has planned a small-group consultation with eight to ten of these fathers about what helps or stops them staying involved, and a roundtable with national practitioners on gaps in parenting support. The findings are shaping its social media during the week. They will also feed into a proposed civil society side event at the 48th Ordinary Session of the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child in Maseru this October. The message is that universal parenting support has to include kinship carers rather than assume a nuclear family.
Zimbabwe: Farm Orphans Support Trust (FOST). In 2024 and 2025 FOST held discussions with children in kinship care and the grandmothers who look after many of them. This year it is taking those conversations to the people with influence in Mutare District, Manicaland. It is holding dialogues with ten traditional leaders, ten district government officials and five religious leaders on how tradition, faith and policy can support kinship families. Radio sessions on Zi FM or Diamond FM, one before the week and one during it, could reach 50,000 to 100,000 listeners. A one-day mobile awareness campaign with government partners aims to reach 2,000 community members.
Asia
Bangladesh: Centre for Services and Information on Disability (CSID). CSID works with children with disabilities, who often depend on relatives who understand their needs, including the sign language a deaf child uses at home. Bangladesh's Children Act 2013 refers to alternative care but says nothing specific about kinship care, and there is no national guideline. CSID is holding a community rally, a discussion session and an art competition, linked to Child Rights Week, along with a dialogue in Dhaka between government social workers, teachers, NGOs, parents and young people.
India: Butterflies. In 2018 a government mapping exercise found 370,227 children in care institutions across India, most with at least one living parent. Butterflies is running a community-led campaign on the government schemes that can keep children with relatives, such as sponsorship under Mission Vatsalya. It aims to reach 240 community members in 12 communities and 120 Anganwadi and ASHA workers, the frontline health and childcare staff who often notice first when a child is at risk of losing parental care. Consultations with District Child Protection Units will set out how these workers and the units can refer families to each other.
India: Praajak. Praajak had planned to analyse Child Welfare Committee decisions with the West Bengal State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, until the Commission was dissolved. Rather than wait, it launched a Kinship Care Discovery Initiative. Since July, its Response Centres have worked with village councils, schools, health workers, women's groups and local clubs to find children living with relatives who have never received any support, recording them in a Kinship Care Learning Registry and making referrals where needed. During the week Praajak is sharing these findings at district consultations and a State Learning Laboratory. It is also running a public campaign with 30 to 40 local Puja committees under the theme "No Child Should Celebrate Puja Without Family". Events finish on 9 October, before the festival holidays begin.
Kyrgyzstan: Semya. Semya's campaign in Kara-Suu District, Osh Region, "Legal Guardianship: Reliable Protection for Children", aims to reach at least 300 children and kinship carers by the end of October, and to get local authorities to recognise kinship care as a key way of protecting migrant workers' children. During the week, it is distributing a leaflet, approved by the district's social welfare authorities, on how to arrange guardianship, the rights and responsibilities of guardians, and the state support available. Pupils are performing a school play, "Family is not limited by distance", and social workers open each performance with guidance on applying for guardianship. Volleyball matches between four schools, under the banner "Sport for a Happy and Safe Childhood", bring families and the wider community together around the same message. From 12 to 19 October, Semya will share photo reports, short stories, and the leaflet on social media and through the national Zhanyryk network.
Nepal: Voice of Children. Nepal's Children Act 2018 and Children Regulation 2021 recognise kinship care, but the operational guidelines needed to put them into practice have not been written. About 15% of the children Voice of Children reunites with family end up living with relatives. In Lalitpur and Sunsari districts Voice of Children is running orientation sessions for 100 children and young people and parenting education for 40 kinship caregivers. It is also meeting 25 social workers, including the Alternative Care Working Group. A public service announcement and continued advocacy with the government for a kinship care procedure is part of the plan.
Philippines: CPTCSA. In April, the Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Sexual Abuse held a national roundtable on kinship care for children who have survived online sexual abuse and exploitation. This week it is working locally. With partner Quidan Kaisahan in Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, it is consulting ten kinship carers and three local government and civil society social workers about their experiences, gaps in services and what works. The findings will form the basis of a future position paper on kinship care for children at risk, and will be taken to national policymakers.
Latin America and the Caribbean
Brazil: Associação Brasileira Terra dos Homens (ABTH). ABTH is aiming its campaign at judges, prosecutors, public defenders and the officials who design social protection policy. In October it is hosting a national webinar presenting an analysis of subsidised guardianship in Brazil, with testimony from families. It is also publishing two collections of articles by members of the national intersectoral group on the care of children by extended family and people close to them (GIN-FE), which it convenes. The organisation is also behind the second International Colloquium on Extended Family Care in Rio de Janeiro, with support from Family for Every Child. Three other members from the region are presenting there.
Colombia: Taller de Vida. Taller de Vida is holding three community meetings with Indigenous, Afro-descendant and mestizo families, community leaders and youth organisations in Pereira (Risaralda) and in Maicao and Riohacha (La Guajira). Alongside these, it is meeting the Colombian Family Welfare Institute (ICBF), family commissioners and the family courts, and holding a regional seminar on how the law treats care by relatives. The longer aim is a national dialogue table on kinship care by June 2027. Stories gathered from families will be shared at the colloquium organized by ABTH in Rio de Janeiro.
Guatemala: CONACMI. CONACMI is presenting Guatemala's national work on family care in the Latin American session of the Rio colloquium, as part of a push for a regional agenda. At home it is training 30 professionals from multidisciplinary teams in its model of integrated support for children and families, designed to prevent separation, and posting about family care on its social media channels.
Guyana: ChildLinK. ChildLinK runs eight centres and supported more than 900 children in 2025, many of whom had experienced violence or abandonment. Its focus this October is on strengthening families. Ten centre staff are being trained to run weekly parenting sessions for five weeks in four centres, reaching 50 parents and carers. Storytelling sessions bring together children, parents and community stakeholders. Children and parents are also making short videos on what kinship care means to them, to be shared on social media with 300 printed brochures of parenting messages.
Paraguay: ENFOQUE Niñez. ENFOQUE Niñez has carried out life-story research on criadazgo, a practice in which children are sent to live and work in another household. Its campaign, running from September to November, asks how investing in family care and support could prevent these separations. It is holding three meetings of about 30 people each with academics, university students and child protection practitioners, and running six campaign graphics with paid Facebook and Instagram promotion through October. The research will also be presented at the Rio colloquium; the first colloquium drew around 800 people in person and online.
Europe
Ireland: Kinship Care Ireland. Kinship Care Ireland has a full programme for each weekday. The week opens on Monday 5 October with a photocall outside government buildings, joined by staff and a local peer group of carers. Tuesday brings an "introduction to kinship care" webinar for professionals, politicians and allies. Wednesday's main event brings carers together with policymakers and the community and voluntary sector. It includes panel discussions, a speaker with lived experience, a workshop on behaviour as communication, and a self-care session and gifts for carers. Thursday has two online self-care sessions for carers led by a counsellor and psychotherapist. On Friday the organisation plans to publish either a peer group toolkit for practitioners or an information booklet for carers, whichever is ready first. Partner organisations are recording short videos of support to post each day.
United Kingdom: Children and Families Across Borders (CFAB). About one in three children in the UK has a parent born abroad, yet relatives overseas are not routinely identified or assessed when councils plan a child's long-term care. CFAB has used Freedom of Information requests to find out how local authorities across the UK handle this. During the week it is sharing early findings, publishing blogs, and running social media and targeted messaging aimed at parliamentarians, government officials and directors of children's services. This is the first phase of a wider effort. The full FOI and Impact Reports, a parliamentary launch and a policy briefing follow later in October.