Kenya is planning to end institutional care for children by July 2032, with the government seeking to move vulnerable children from residential homes into family and community-based settings to protect their development, cultural identity and sense of belonging.
The National Council for Children Services (NCCS) is spearheading the transition through the Care Reform Strategy, which aims to strengthen families and ensure children grow up in environments where they remain connected to their communities, languages and cultural backgrounds.
Stanley Hari, a Children Officer at the council, said research has established that children raised in institutions are more likely to experience developmental delays than those brought up in family settings, raising concerns about the effects of long-term separation from their families.
Speaking on Radio Generation on Monday, Hari explained that placing children in residential homes often disconnects them from familiar surroundings, including their mother tongue, traditional food and cultural practices.
"You can imagine a child is given services by an institution, but this child is uprooted from Kisumu, from their cultural background, from what they know, from their mother tongue, from their food, and they are placed somewhere else," he said.
Under the reform programme, the government intends to strengthen family support systems and tackle the challenges that force children out of their homes instead of relying on institutions as the main form of care.
Hari identified neglect, domestic violence, absent parents and poor parenting as some of the major reasons children end up in residential institutions or are forced to live on the streets.
He said some children leave their homes because of violence and the lack of a safe environment, while others are drawn into residential facilities by organisations promising access to education and other benefits.
"Sometimes there is violence from home, and these children don't have a place to call home, so they move out there," he said.
Hari said the government was also working to address the factors that encourage the continued placement of children in institutions, including practices by organisations that attract vulnerable children into residential care.
As part of the transition, the government is promoting alternative family care arrangements provided for under the Children Act 2022, including foster care.
The arrangement allows vulnerable children to live temporarily with trained families as authorities work to trace their biological relatives and establish whether they can safely return home.
Foster care arrangements can be renewed for a period of up to three years. Where efforts to trace a child's biological family are unsuccessful, foster parents may proceed to adopt the child.
Hari explained that the National Council for Children Services regulates charitable children's institutions and adoption practices, while the Directorate of Children Services is responsible for overseeing the implementation and management of child protection programmes.
The transition forms part of Kenya's broader care reform framework, which seeks to replace institutional placements with family-based alternatives by July 2032.
The council is also promoting the National Positive Parenting Programme to address harmful practices within households, including neglect and violence against children.
Hari said changing how parents raise their children was essential to ensuring that violence is not treated as an acceptable way of correcting or disciplining them.
He warned that children who grow up in homes where physical punishment is normalised may come to view violence as an appropriate response to wrongdoing.
"We are telling this child when you cane them when they do wrong, violence is an answer to something wrongly done," he said.
The government is therefore seeking to address both the conditions that drive children out of their homes and parenting practices that expose them to harm, as it works towards making family and community-based care the preferred option for vulnerable children.