Central Asian countries convened this week at a forum hosted by the Government of Uzbekistan to strengthen social services and promote the well-being of children, families, and vulnerable communities across the region.

Government officials, academia, and child rights organizations called for more significant investment in social services across Central Asia, emphasizing the critical role these services play in preventing family separation, supporting vulnerable populations, and fostering sustainable communities.

The call to action was announced during the forum Building Sustainable Communities in Central Asia: Promoting the Well-being of Children and Families through Social Work and Social Services. The Government of Uzbekistan hosted the forum in Tashkent this week, which was convened by Uzbekistan’s National Agency for Social Protection, UNICEF, and Columbia University.

The forum aimed to enhance social services for vulnerable groups, including children, persons with disabilities, survivors of gender-based violence, and older persons, and address high rates of children growing up in residential care facilities in Central Asia. It concluded with a call for governments to ensure equitable access to essential services for all, particularly the most vulnerable.

The call to action urged investment in the social service workforce to deliver high-quality, child-centered, and gender-responsive services. Additionally, governments were encouraged to implement programmes to address violence against women and girls and to establish services that prevent family separation, support family care, and gradually close large-scale residential care facilities for children.

The call to action also underscored the need for regional cooperation, awareness-raising, and empowerment of children, young people, families, and communities to drive change.

UNICEF’s recently released policy brief on Keeping families together in Central Asia notes that the rate of children living in residential care facilities is double the global average. Currently, 60,000 children from five countries in Central Asia live in residential care facilities.

UNICEF works with governments and regional partners to help keep families together and support family- and community-based care. This includes developing and implementing deinstitutionalisation policies and programmes, scaling up protection and family support services to prevent children being separated from their families, promoting family- and community-based care and family reunification and reintegration and safe transition to independent life.

UNICEF also works with governments and national statistical offices to improve the availability, comparability, and quality of data on children in alternative care.

UzA