What your support means for vulnerable children in Cambodia

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What Your Support Means for Vulnerable Children

We’re so grateful for all of you who are praying for and supporting our work to keep vulnerable children in families….where they belong! We want you to see the impact you are having, so here’s a snapshot of some of what has been happening at CIF in 2026. 

Family-Based Care

Family-based care is still CIF’s “bread & butter.” It’s what we started out doing 20 years ago and continues to be our foundation. We have had to scale back a bit due to financial constraints, but we are still supporting 107 children in safe, loving families in local communities. Of these, 59 had been referred to CIF due to being at risk of family separation. These children are being supported within their own nuclear or extended families (through family preservation or kinship care). CIF provides short term financial support along with training, case management, and, in some cases, income generation investment to help these families gain long term stability. Another 42 children are being supported through foster care. These families receive a monthly stipend to help cover child care costs along with training and ongoing case management. Additionally, we are following up with 6 children who have been adopted by their foster families.

Sophat’s mother reviews his homework with him.

One of these children is Sophat (name changed for confidentiality). If you have donated to CIF’s “Helping Children Grow Up In Loving Families” project through GlobalGiving, you may have already read Sophat’s story from our report a couple of months ago. When Children In Families first began placing children in foster care there was no clearcut path to domestic adoption. In recent years that has changed and there are now national policies and procedures in place. We are proud to say that CIF’s consistent advocacy has had a role in making this happen.

While we try to reunite children with their families of origin whenever possible, a domestic adoption legal framework achieves permanency for children who cannot be reunited with their biological families. The importance of this for children like Sophat cannot be overstated. There are significant ramifications in terms of their legal standing and place in the community. Even more significant, though, is the emotional security that comes with that legal transfer.

Sophat’s case is especially noteworthy as he lives with mild cerebral palsy. Children with disabilities are among those most at risk of facing family separation and it takes a special family to be willing to foster them. Though Sophat’s family admits that there were challenges related to his diagnosis, it did not deter them from making him a permanent part of their family. 

Sophat’s adoptive mother reports, “We were so happy when we first heard that we could adopt our little (Sophat). We really love him with all our hearts and we want him to be with us forever and legally. Now, he is our son legally. We have already used the verdict to process a birth certificate for (Sophat) and register him in our family book (the family book is an important legal document in Cambodia).

Enhancing Service Provision (ESP) Program

ESP began as a pilot project from 2021 to 2023 focused on extending CIF’s reach beyond our own beneficiaries. The intent was to build community capacity for support and inclusion of children with disabilities. One of the reasons children with disabilities are at greater risk of family separation is the lack of support services available to them in their communities. ESP was developed to help in addressing this need.

We were very fortunate to be supported by Amyas Valora Foundation with a short term grant to reboot the program beginning in late 2025. We targeted Svay Rieng, the province where CIF first started placing children into care. ABLE, CIF’s in-house support services for children with disabilities and their families, was started because of the lack of services available in this province. As this endeavor was launched, a government official confirmed that this is still the case. Despite more than 20,000 residents having some form of disability, there are virtually no support services available. Even wheelchairs are in short supply. 

While this seems like an almost insurmountable challenge, we’ve been encouraged by all we have been able to accomplish in the eight months since we started:

• A baseline survey helping to identify needs, attitudes, and current capacity throughout the province
• Awareness raising and community dialogues to engage community members in thinking about how to address needs for support and inclusion
• Training for over 50 government, health, and education staff on topics to help build their capacity to support children and families
• Capacity-building support for CIF’s existing respite care and the launch of a new community-based respite care service for children with disabilities at a local church
• Site visits to respite services to increase awareness among local government officials and build their commitment to supporting the expansion of similar services
• Launching five peer support groups for families of children with disabilities
• Community mobilization activities to encourage community participation in addressing needs of children with disabilities and their families
• Direct follow up to assist families and local government staff in accessing specialized services available outside of their community

This list is not exhaustive and does not fully capture the impact that this project has had, but it gives you a glimpse. One of the most encouraging things has been to see how actively engaged these community members have been. They recognize the need and are eager to know how they can be more responsive to the needs of children with disabilities and their families. There is a lot of work left to do, but there is a lot to celebrate and a lot of hope for what can be accomplished. 

Peer Support Group Meeting

An Open Window

You know the saying, “When God closes a door, He opens a window.” The leadership at CIF knew that we needed to make some tough decisions to be sustainable. We have been so proud of OSCaR, our online case management system, but we had to prioritize the families being supported by direct services. So, when an opportunity came up to have someone else take the IT management on, it seemed the wise thing to do.

We originally developed OSCaR to support best practices by our own social work staff. We scaled it up to make it available to dozens of other organizations in Cambodia and a few outside of Cambodia. It has been a great tool for many working with vulnerable children.

Our Executive Director, Sam Ol, had met some of the team from Both Ends Believing (BEB) at a World Without Orphans conference a few years ago. BEB developed Children First Software (CFS), which is used by organizations in various parts of the world to assist residential care facilities in transitioning children out of orphanage care and into family-based care.

BEB became our open window as they agreed to take on our whole OSCaR team to introduce CFS into Asia, beginning with Cambodia. They liked some of OSCaR’s features so they are working to integrate some of the best features into CFS and also assist OSCaR users in transitioning to use CFS. Please pray for this ongoing process.

You’re an Important Part of This!

Children In Families has weathered many challenges in our 20 years and God has always been faithful. We are facing a pretty significant financial shortage right now and are asking the Lord for wisdom in how to navigate it. We have implemented cost-saving measures, and are actively seeking new funding opportunities from a wide range of sources.

• Thank you for your prayers – please keep them coming! We know that the Lord listens to His people and that there is power in lifting one another up to the Lord. Please ask the Lord to provide His wisdom and the resources to do what He is calling CIF to do. We want to be responsive to His leading as we look for opportunities to work more effectively and to partner with like-minded people to accomplish our mission.
• If you are not already, would you prayerfully consider becoming a financial partner to CIF? Any amount would be a huge blessing and a lifeline for vulnerable children and families. You can help with a one time donation or a regular monthly commitment. Support through institutional grants can be helpful and we will continue to seek them, but grants alone do not provide the financial stability that this work requires. Support from friends like you helps sustain critical services, prevent family separation, support children with disabilities, and prepare youth for independent living.

We are fully vetted by GlobalGiving so you can give with confidence. Your donations on their platform are tax deductible in the U.S.  A reminder, though – next month there will be an opportunity to make your gift go even further! Donations between $100 and $1500 given on 15th July will be eligible for the matching funds from GlobalGiving.

Australian donors can give tax deductible donations through ACCI. 

Thanks so much for your support!

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” Romans 15:13

Lisa and the CIF team