Mr Stephen Adongo, Director of Social Welfare, has underlined the need to give priority to family-based care for orphans and vulnerable children and de-emphasize institutional care.
The latter, he said, must be adopted as a last resort.
Mr Adongo again asked that those children should only be placed in an orphanage upon recommendation by the court.
He was addressing a two-day national workshop organized by the department to discuss care options for orphans and vulnerable children with sponsorship from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Kumasi.
It brought together 40 participants, made up of officials from the Social Welfare Department, security agencies, traditional and religious leaders, Ghana Education Service and the Ghana Health Service and the media.
The wide range of topics treated included “The Impact of Social Welfare Institutional Care on Children,” “Care Reform Initiative,” “Rights of a Juvenile,” “Legislation on Children” and “Minimum Standard for Residential Home for Children”.
Mr Adongo said family-based care had the advantage of bringing families together, preservation of the child’s identity and inculcation of family values and culture.
He noted that most of the children put into the orphanages tended to suffer all forms of abuse, emotionally and sexually, a situation that tended to adversely affect their development.
Madam Helen Obeng Asamoah, an official of the department, took participants through procedures for establishing a residential home and warned that those which did not meet set standards would not be allowed to operate.
Already, they had shut down about 15 orphan homes.
Mr Iddrisu Abdallah of UNICEF Ghana, appealed to traditional rulers, district assemblies and religious organizations to support families to take care of vulnerable children in the society.