After weeks of intensive work on the new Level 2 training materials in July with Dr. Rachel McKail visiting from the UK to develop a chapter on working with children who have experienced trauma, August began with the successful inauguration of Level 2 training at our National Foster Care Training & Resource Centre in Chiang Mai. Five Child Welfare Homes (CWH) - the same five that we first tested our Level 1 training with - attended the workshop. The staff of these CWHs has become good friends, and it was great to host them again. As always, these workshops were filled with lots of activities to help the attendees understand the concepts and theories, and how to apply them.

With Level 2 training ready to be delivered, we are pleased to share that our Level 1 training has been completed at several welfare homes in the south of Thailand this month. There are now 15 welfare homes where Level 1 has been completed and we look forward to delivering the Level 2 training to them at our National Foster Care Training & Resource Centre in the coming months.
As well as delivering training workshops to three CWHs in Saraburi, near Bangkok this month, we also hosted a meeting at our Training Centre in Chiang Mai for the Thailand Without Orphans Alliance. Care for Children has hosted all four meetings so far, and it is exciting to see so many Thai Church leaders being engaged to promote family-based care for orphaned and vulnerable children in Thailand. Much of this month’s meeting was used to plan for the global Orphan Sunday event, which falls on November 13 this year.

Care for Children was also invited as one of three organisations to present at a meeting hosted by the New Life Centre Foundation in Chiang Mai, discussing the state of foster care in Thailand under the theme ‘Changing Trends’. This is a meeting they hold every 4-5 years, and since their last meeting, Care for Children’s work with the Royal Thai Government has moved foster care into the national spotlight like never before, and is a clear ‘changing trend’ in the social welfare system. The presentation was received very well, and there was great interest in our work, with many questions from the eager participants to answer.

Thomas Abbott (Regional Manager, SE Asia) and Jane Arnott (Country Manager, Thailand) joined Emma Zhang (Training Manager, China) at Care for Children’s headquarters in the UK to discuss global developments in Care for Children’s training materials.

With so many workshops and meetings, it is evident that the work Care for Children does in Thailand is of great relevance and importance, and that it is greatly appreciated by the local communities and national government authorities alike.