Whole Child International

Whole Child International is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 2004. Whole Child focuses on improving the quality of care for vulnerable children worldwide by working within childcare institutions (orphanages) and in limited-resource childcare centers where children often show the same unmet developmental needs and poor outcomes as those in orphanages. Whole Child's program is built as a countrywide collaboration, working together with a national government and a major local university to implement a unified strategy across a nation's childcare system.

Whole Child's strategy of working within systems of existing orphanages in multiple countries distinguishes it from most other international NGOs, which assert that orphanages are an unacceptable alternative to family-based living, and therefore should be defunded and denied efforts at improvement in favor of their total replacement ("deinstitutionalization"). Whole Child also recognizes the value of family-based systems, but since the number and population of orphanages continues to expand, Whole Child will continue creating solutions in order to improve child development outcomes until the orphanages have successfully been replaced.

Whole Child’s model is based on the theories of Hungarian pediatrician Emmi Pikler (1902–1984), the Reggio Emilia approach to Early Childhood Education, and other sources. The Pikler Institute, in Budapest, Hungary, was founded in 1946 to care for children orphaned and abandoned during the Second World War. Pikler’s methodology involves increasing opportunities for meaningful attachment and bonding between caregiver and child through “continuity of care.”

Continuity of care ensures that children have one consistent caregiver instead of multiple caregivers over a long period of time. It additionally creates of small groups assigned to a single caregiver to replace larger, more chaotic populations randomly assigned to an often non-continuous staff. Research has found that children with secure attachment relationships with their caregivers are more likely to play and explore and to interact with other adults (Raikes, 1996). Conversely, more frequent changes in caregivers have been reported to be associated with negative child outcomes including high levels of distress (Cryer et al., 2005) withdrawing behaviors and higher levels of aggression later on (Howes & Hamilton, 1993).

Working with the government of Nicaragua, Whole Child conducted its initial work in varied institutional settings in Managua, Nicaragua. In 2006, Whole Child began training caregivers at the El Diviño Niño children’s home in Managua to improve the quality of childcare given to their children. In 2013, Whole Child achieved proof of concept and completed program design for implementation in countries of need. In 2014, the Inter-American Development Bank granted Whole Child a $1 million technical collaboration to implement the resulting program in neighboring El Salvador, whose government is an active collaborator in the project along with the University of Central America in San Salvador.

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