29 orphanages shut down in Egypt due to higher rates of adoption

CAIRO – 27 February 2023: Legal Advisor to the Ministry of Social Solidarity Mohamed Omar al-Kamary stated Monday that Egypt used to have 526 orphanages, but now the figure dropped to 497 as 29 shut down due to the increase in alternative care.

To better ensure the safety of adopted children, the legal advisor revealed that the ministry plans to pay foster families to avoid any risks of human trafficking. Also, it works on introducing weekly/monthly visits to foster families by either the ministry itself or the facility where the children were adopted.

As for foster families living abroad, Kamary said that the ministry is trying to make agreements with other countries for their agencies to play the monitoring role on its behalf. He added that Egypt has that kind of deal only with Qatar until present, noting that regulations provide that at least one of the foster parents has to be an Egyptian citizen.

The statements were made at the Regional Conference on Social Care System Reform organized by the Ministry of Social Solidarity in collaboration with UNICEF and the Arab League.

National Coordinator at Rwanda National Child Development Agency (NCDA) Naphtal Rutayisire said that the establishment encouraged the residents of every village to elect a man and a woman to respond to the needs of children, help in abuse prevention, and assist with reporting sexual assault cases.

Speaking of social workforce strengthening, Director of Global Social Service Workforce Alliance Hugh Salmon stressed that efforts must be deployed to raise awareness on social work as some countries are in need of more social workers.

In that context, Salmon pointed out that being a social worker does not require a specific degree. Rather, it requires pre-service training and in-service training. He equally underscored the salience of practiced knowledge, as making mistakes is important to ensure safe practices in the future.  

The director of Global Social Service Workforce Alliance further stipulated that social workers must be licensed, and that the license has to be renewed in a specific duration so that the candidate would submit their work to a certain committee for assessment. In the UK, for instance, the license has to be renewed every three years, he said.

Finally, Salmon asserted that social workers must be held in high regard in order to encourage more individuals to join the profession.