By the year 2015 it is calculated that there may well be another 10 million orphaned children in Sub-Saharan Africa to add to the 14 million current orphans due to HIV/AIDS.

A report by four NGOs and supported by Archbishop Desmond Tutu (The Promise of a Future, July 2005) calls the situation “an orphan crisis without historical precedent”. It calls for “a broad-based response that is compassionate and strategic and addresses the root cause of the pandemic which is poverty”. (This report and others referred to below are available online at www.firelightfoundation.org.)

On reading and then pondering the report I found myself considering what I personally would recommend and what action I would endorse in such a chronic and heart-rending crisis. The recommendations of this report drawing from the work of Save the Children (A Last Resort: The Growing Concern about Children in Residential Care; Roots and Shoots: The Care of Separated Children in the Developing World) and Tearfund (Children in Residential Care and Alternatives) are that orphanages should be used only as temporary or emergency refuges, in favour of community-based responses that strengthen families.

I am sympathetic to the underlying arguments of the writers, and frustrated that it is so hard to get financial support for such grassroots solutions in contrast to the comparative ease with which NGOs can gain support for orphanages. It is always easier to raise money for something concrete (literally as well as metaphorically) rather than for community initiatives, community development, network-building and family-nurture.

But those who know me, what I have written, and where and how I live, will know that I am worried by the stark contrast drawn between “institutional care” (represented by orphanages) on the one hand, and “families within communities” on the other.

It is perfectly clear that there have been, and continue to be large institutional-type orphanages in many parts of the world, and also that there are, thankfully, millions of happy families within communities. I have experienced many of both in lots of different countries. But will we never be able to see that there are a host of alternative and supplementary types of care for children in between?

(The place where I have lived for most of my life, Mill Grove, is just one of them. It is my family home and also a household where other children, young people and families have come for care and support for four generations. You couldn’t call it a typical English nuclear family, but equally, it is not an orphanage. A similar challenge is presented by the Falconer Home in Zambia which we have known and supported for several decades.)

Rather than get into discussions about definitions, why don’t I try to offer a model that takes seriously the appalling crisis in Africa, the lasting attractions of a grassroots, community-based approach, and the detrimental effects of institutional care? Here goes.

(I’m not sure if the readers of this column know that I spent three years as a community development officer in Scotland. This practical grounding has been the source of much of my inspiration and thinking as the “father” of the Mill Grove family.)

Clearly, in this part of Africa there are simply not the available adults to arrange for adoption and foster care on a large scale, and extended family and community networks have been seriously eroded by the HIV/AIDs crisis, so there is no way in which such traditionally preferred options will be relevant in this situation. No one would recommend refugee camps or vast institutions as long-term solutions to the needs of these millions of children, so what can be done that makes both practical and psycho-social sense?

I think we should learn from the wisdom and experience that have accrued over the centuries and across the world, and accept that it takes a village (or community) to parent, and therefore that anything that is done must engage and involve the neighbourhood and kinship networks within which children are born and live.

If some extended families and networks have been totally destroyed by a combination of poverty, famine, war and disease, then over time there must be the re-creation of such communities. Having identified such communities, or potential communities (some will be those of kin, others of faith, interest or geography), we must locate the adults within them who are willing to take practical responsibility for children who have become orphans.

We should not presume to prescribe how these adults-in-community ought to go about caring for and nurturing these children. Some may be able and willing to extend their own households; some may offer respite care; some may be able to foster children; some may create small group homes (I learned of someone who is setting up just such a place in Rwanda within the next few weeks: she and her husband will restrict the home to ten children); some may think of residential schools; some may consider faith-based communities comprising people of different ages; some may think of children’s hospices and so on.

All the time we must hold on to the twin facts: first, that there needs to be an actual place where the child can sleep, and be secure and safe; second that this will vary depending on local circumstances and resources.

As I continue this column I am continually being reminded of the children’s villages around the world (SOS Kinderdorf, Pestalozzi and the like) that have been developed as a response to the needs of children. They have received a critical press in the West, and I am aware of some of the problems that they face, but could we not learn from their experiences, and adapt such models to different situations?

What if the local village or community became the de facto village within which a variety of “houses” were created and supported? What if such villages endorsed the radical ideas of Korczak so that the voices of children were heard and the places functioned as “children’s republics”? What if education were to be rethought in such settings and was related more to local settings, the natural world and community dynamics than to formal western models on offer?

What if these villages were represented at a regional level by children and adults where there was help, support, and resources? What if there was practical training, including child development theory available to all?

As I re-read the Firelight Foundation Report I realise that all this may not be far removed from what the authors have in mind. If so, that is encouraging. My modest intention is to cast a little light on the whole matter, drawn from the work and experience of people who have sought to care for children around the world in various ways.

For years I have argued that the care of children in the UK has been hampered by the ideological contrast drawn between “institutional” and “familial” care for children. It is not how children have perceived things (the studies are numerous, and the ideologues are always surprised by what the children say!), and it does little justice to the reality of arrangements by which individuals, families and communities have cared for children in need worldwide.

If we could get orphanages and refugee camps, on the one hand, and families on the other, to see new possibilities based on the rich wisdom of those who have sought to base responses to the needs of children on the best available theory and research about how children develop, then families and communities would be strengthened and empowered, and children would find opportunities for shelter, nurture and learning.

I would be more than happy to talk with the authors of this report here at Mill Grove, and to show how we seek to “strengthen the capacity” of families to care for children, and to “mobilise individuals” through community-based solutions. This has meant that we have, over a period of 106 years, recommended or tried just about every type of “good-enough parenting” for the children that we have been seeking to help. And, as it happens, a goodly number of those have been from Africa.