Tajikistan | Healthprom

Resilience on the Silk Road: A Report (2022)

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In Tajikistan, we support the transformation of social services for vulnerable children and their families, and help to turn the tide away from the containment of young children in institutions towards community care with families.

We have a shared vision for nationally scaling-up family and child support that includes protecting children from harm, empowering women and strengthening civil society. Currently, we are looking for new institutional funding to support this work.

Above, you can see our most recent publication together with University of Edinburgh: a report on "First 1000 Days" provision for parent-infant mental health in Tajikistan.

HealthProm has worked in Tajikistan since 2006. Our continuing work plan is to support families to retain care of their children so they do not place them in a Baby Home.

By 2016, we established Family Support Centres next to all four Baby Homes in the country. Our current project takes this one step further by supporting the Government of Tajikistan to transform the Baby Homes into community-oriented Family and Child Support Centres.

Our strengthened family support services include better protection for children vulnerable to abuse and neglect, and more opportunities for alternative family care.

Highlights of our recent work include:

Halving the number of children living in Tajikistan’s Baby Homes.
Strengthening families-- both birth and alternative families-- to care safely for their children in the community.
Testing and delivering a model of outreach support to isolated families in rural areas of Sughd Province.
Transforming the Baby Homes. All the Baby Homes in Tajikistan have now been changed into Family and Child Support Centres.

We deliver this project in association with UNICEF Tajikistan, and through the skills and local knowledge of three Tajik Public Organisation Partners: Hayot dar Oila, Sarchashma and Iroda.

We also benefit from professional guidance and generous support from several UK partners: The Government of Scotland and Falkirk Council, The Fostering Network and Mellow Parenting.

We acknowledge with thanks the funding we receive from the European Union, the UK Department of International Development Community Partnerships Fund, Grand Challenges Canada’s Saving Brains Initiative, and many generous individuals.

Annual independent reviews of our work are conducted by the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (CELCIS). They are available below or in the Resources section of our website.

Next, we want to apply our family support model to transform care in the remaining two provinces of Tajikistan, and more widely in Central Asia.

Local Partners: Hayot dar Oila, Sarchashma and Iroda

UK Partners: The Government of Scotland, Falkirk Council, The Fostering Network and Mellow Parenting.