Field Guide Describes the principles for collaboration among relief agencies that emerged after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, with an emphasis on the roles and responsibilities of agencies working with children separated from their families due to conflict or other emergencies. Managers with international agencies, staff of relevant nongovernmental and governmental, and generalists as well as specialists in social welfare get information about: (1) the long-term policy implications of interventions in emergencies; (2) principles of work in emergencies, resource needs, and implementation procedures; (3) guidance on administration, caseload management, staffing, and information systems; (4) core activities of tracing programs that involve identification, documentation, tracing, and reunification (IDTR); (5) options for interim care and placement, including foster care, guardianship, adoption, and institutional care; (6) necessary steps to protect children during the process of repatriation; (7) problems of reintegration and broader issues of protection, follow-up, and community monitoring; and (8) important considerations for setting up information systems. Coordination and information-sharing among the agencies responsible for direct assistance, including food, medical aid, shelter, water, and sanitation, can promote efforts to keep children with their families and their communities. Training Manual Provides step-by-step guidance on working with separated children, with an emphasis on family tracing and reunification. Divided into 9 modules, the training manual focuses on program planning and implementation. Relief agency field staff get detailed information about: (1) the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the philosophy underlying work in family tracing and the prevention of separation; (2) emergency situations that involve voluntary, forced, or accidental separation, emergency tracing, protecting children during evacuations, coordinating interventions for separated children, and conducting social assessment interviews; (3) basic principles of and obstacles to family tracing, the key steps of identification, documentation, tracing, verification, reunification, and follow-up, and the role of information systems; (4) how to work with children without addresses; (5) interim care options, including foster and community homes, as well as meeting children?s emotional and physical needs; (6) basic principles of determining the best interests of the child; (7) voluntary repatriation; (8) effective communication techniques when working with children from different cultural backgrounds and ways to help them express themselves; and (9) how to build capacity within communities and overcome problems of working with local communities.
