The Bucharest Early Intervention Study made clear the detrimental impact to children growing up in orphanages and institutions. While the institutionalization of children remains a global problem, it is a hidden one as so many of these children go uncounted. More than identifying these children, BEB seeks to identify their origins, their possible relatives, healthcare needs and more. We’re able to do this through Children First Software (CFS), the only technology platform of its kind.

CFS works to create digital profiles of children living in institutions and orphanages around the world — activating the first of a five-phase process that follows the principles of the Hague Convention. With access to the child’s family history, demographics and health records, social workers can better advocate for the child and begin the journey to place them in loving families.

Create a digital profile

At the local level, advocates identify and create a comprehensive digital record for each institutionalized child, including birth, family, health, special needs and education. All data fields are configurable, including unique identifiers, fingerprints and DNA.

Find a path to family

Adhering to the priorities outlined in the Hague Convention, the system allows each country to define and complete the steps required to determine if a child can be reunified with their biological family or if they are eligible for kinship care, foster care, or domestic or international adoption.

Qualify prospective families

If a child cannot be reunified with biological family, matching them with the correct adoptive family is critical. To do that a family registry is administered by the foreign government to electronically collect information on prospective families in an organized, transparent way. Data, which reflects best practices for administering a home study of prospective families, evaluates a number of factors, including a family’s capacity to care for children with special needs.

Match a child to a family

Through CFS, local government authorities are able to obtain critical information through the software’s matching system, enabling them to connect children eligible for placement with adoptive families who meet key criteria. Instead of sifting through hundreds of files, decision-makers can carefully consider only potential families who uniquely match with the child’s needs.

Ensure a successful placement

With a focus on the child, the system enables monitoring post-placement for both reunifications and adoptions, enhancing governmental oversight through regular reporting, as well as informing continuous improvement to processes by documenting factors that lead to successful placements.

Scalable and configurable to each country’s unique needs, CFS enables those working on behalf of children to see and control a process that was previously absent and left children to languish for years in destitution.

Protecting Children

CFS establishes an audit trail of work for each child’s complete digital case, providing visibility into the child welfare system. This reduces the number of children trafficked as they are no longer lost in the system.

Making a Significant Impact

Rather than help one child, CFS assists a country’s entire population of institutionalized children find families. That means with every implementation, potentially thousands of vulnerable children get the chance to exit institutions into the loving arms of a family.

Driving Sustainable Value

In addition to terminating the cycle of deprivation for an institution’s current children, CFS helps to shorten the length of stay for future children, delivering positive systemic change in child welfare — one country at a time.

Strengthening Countries

BEB contracts directly with central authorities, enabling them to do what’s in the best interest of each child while driving transparency and accountability. Because CFS leads to fewer children aging out, ill-equipped to care for themselves, it also benefits countries’ social economics.