A Christmas Wish: Another gift for the Maria family
We first brought you the story of foster mother Maria, and her foster daughter Maria, in 2019. Now, mother Maria has once again undertaken the ...
OUR APPROACH
OUR MISSION AT LUMOS
To fight for every child’s right to a family by transforming care systems around the world.
OUR VISION
A world where all children will grow up in a safe and loving family.
What is Lumos?
Lumos exists to light a path to a brighter future for these children. Founded by the author J.K. Rowling, we fight to tackle the causes of family separation and transform systems of care that take children away from their families and communities. We’re committed to ending the institutionalisation of children, so every child enjoys the right to grow up in a loving family where they can thrive.
Over the next three years, we’ll work hard to translate global commitments into local action, leading to lasting change for vulnerable children. We’ll galvanise and support governments, civil society and other influential organisations to transform global policy intentions into action around the world. By sharing our learning and expertise, we’ll also support locally led efforts that lead to lasting change and safe, quality care for vulnerable children.
OUR STRATEGY
1. BUILDING GLOBAL EXPERTISE
We’ll use our knowledge and experience to support those responsible for reforming care systems in their own countries. This will include learning exchanges where they can share experiences and challenges, and providing technical support, evidence and guidance to help design and run better care systems. Importantly, we’ll make sure that people with lived experience of institutionalisation are included throughout the process.
2. CATALYSING CHANGE
We know that ending institutionalisation benefits children and society – and we’ll use this evidence to motivate and press governments around the world to reform the way they care for children. This will involve leading targeted research and advocacy campaigns to identify and tackle the drivers of institutionalisation, promoting more accountability by tracking and highlighting progress, and influencing international funding, programmes and policy
3. DEMONSTRATING & INNOVATING
Building on our heritage of successful programmes showing how care systems can be reformed, we’ll use what we’ve learnt in the past to support partners with their own reform efforts. Over the next two years, as we complete our current country demonstration work in Eastern Europe, we’ll identify programmes in new regions – building expertise and evidence of what good care reform looks like in challenging contexts, particularly for those children that typically get left behind.
LUMOS’S SEVEN LEVELS OF ENGAGEMENT
OUR CHILD-CENTRED APPROACH INVOLVES:
- Giving children the care they need. This means closing down orphanages and moving children into families, foster care or a small group home.
- Keeping children at home in the first place. Most children in orphanages could be in a loving, protective family environment. By supporting families, we can help children stay at home.
- Providing practical support, advice and training by shifting resources to community-based services, while giving existing staff new skills and local employment opportunities.
- Empowering children, families and communities to take a lead role in making the change.
- Changing attitudes, policies, and practices forever. No child should live in an orphanage. By working together, with international donors, governments and communities we can achieve change. Forever.
RELATED RESOURCES
Building on our heritage and direct experience of systems reform, our new strategy focuses on sharing learning with others to reach more children and amplify the impacts of our work on children’s lives. The strategy is available to download as a 12, 4 and single page document.