Orphan Care Programs - Holt International

Personalized Care and Advocacy

Children living in orphanages, without the care and support of a family, are among the most at risk in the world. Through the following initiatives, your generous giving helps to provide the highest level of care to all children living in the care centers, foster families and group homes we support and partner with.

Orphanage Partnerships

Holt partners with orphanages and group homes around the world. While we work with these care facilities to reunite children with their families or unite children with families through adoption, we provide support to every child in care — whether or not they are on track for international adoption. We ensure that orphanages have a proper caregiver-to-child ratio and that caregivers and other orphanage staff are trained to provide the highest level of care and advocacy to all children.

Nutrition

Around the world, children in orphanage care are malnourished and lack the care and attention they need during feeding time. This is especially true for children with special needs. But early child nutrition is critical to every child’s development and long-term health. That’s why Holt’s Child Nutrition Program (CNP) focuses specifically on children in institutionalized care. This integrated program includes nutrition screening, growth charting, supplement and diet changes as well as feeding method training for caregivers. Since the CNP began in 2012, we’ve already seen a profound decrease in the number of children who are wasted, stunted or nutrient-deficient.

Ethical Advocacy

We ensure that every care facility we partner with is Hague-accredited and in compliance with the highest standard of ethics and procedure in inter-country adoption. This means that before a child is eligible for adoption, in-country staff exhausts all efforts to reunite a child with his or her birth parents or extended birth family. Only then do we begin advocacy for that child to join a loving, permanent family through adoption.

Domestic Adoption

Before matching a child with an adoptive family overseas, we first strive to find them a family in their birth country through domestic adoption. When a child is matched with a family through domestic adoption, the trauma of transition is minimized as they grow up in the culture and country of their birth. Many of the countries where we work are becoming more open to domestic adoption, and more and more children are finding their permanent, loving families.

International Adoption

For many children, adoption is their best route to a stable, loving family. Each child remains in orphanage, foster or group home care while our expert team of social workers and adoption professionals works to find a family best suited to care for each child's unique needs. Our staff first seeks families who live in the child's birth country — giving them the opportunity to grow up in the country and culture of their birth. If unsuccessful finding a domestic adoptive family, however, our staff will begin searching for a family in the U.S. As part of our commitment to serving adoptees and families, we provide pre- and post-adoption counseling, education, support and resources to ensure lifelong success for both children and their families — once they come home, and throughout their lives.

Foster Care

As a child waits to join a family through domestic or international adoption, the best place for them to be is in a family-like environment. That’s why, whenever possible, we train foster parents to care for children who are waiting. Holt was instrumental in developing foster care programs in many of the countries where we work today. These highly trained and loving foster families provide children with the one-on-one care and social and physical development they need to someday thrive in their permanent adoptive family.

Group Homes

In addition to partnering with orphanages, Holt also works with several group home facilities. These group homes are tailored to the needs of a specific group of children such as older children living with HIV or infants or toddlers awaiting or recovering from lifesaving surgeries. Group homes often care for fewer children than other institutions and can provide children with the specific, specialized and individual attention they need.

Medical Care

Because many of the children in care have special medical or developmental needs, access to medical or therapeutic resources is crucial. And the sooner a child receives this care, the sooner they will become healthy and developmentally on-track. This medical care ranges anywhere from cleft lip and palate surgeries to heart operations to anti-seizure medication to physical or occupational therapy. Oftentimes a child will require this medical care before they become eligible for adoption, before they even have the chance of joining a family.

Special Needs

It is a heartbreaking reality that the majority of children in orphanage care have some sort of special needs. Ranging anywhere from autism to HIV to limb difference, these children require specialized therapy, resources, medical care and education. Our orphan care program ensures that children with special needs have all that they need. And when they receive the care they need, their chances of joining a family through adoption increase exponentially. All children deserve to be healthy and the opportunity to grow up in the care of a loving, permanent family.