Our Approach

The unique composition of our Foundation brings together organisations in different countries working with a shared vision of children in families. Our Key Assets teams in Australia, Canada, Japan and New Zealand represent a network of approximately 7,000 foster care and child care practitioners providing services that help families to stay together whenever possible and supporting family-based solutions for when alternative care is required.

This structure enables us to share and build on our collective experience, knowledge, practitioner skills, and proven best practice models as we continue to deliver innovative and quality services, including family preservation, family strengthening, kinship care, foster care, respite services and independent living arrangements.

In addition, we are also able to utilise the shared learning and resources generated across the Foundation to contribute to the global movement aimed at ending the era of institutional care for children. Through contributing financial and technical support to the development of family-based alternative care in contexts where orphanages are widely used, we are working to keep children in families in even more countries.

Structure

Each organisation within the Martin James Foundation has its own strategy and mission of how it works towards our shared vision of a world in which children grow up and thrive in safe and loving families.

In addition, a set of shared strategic objectives enables us to achieve a greater combined impact. These objectives span a range of interventions that seek to support children, families and communities, as well as the structures and systems designed to protect them. Our work is informed and guided by the principles of the Guidelines of Alternative Care for Children, designed to enhance the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.