Emergency Alternative Families: From June 2004, UNICEF and its partners established criteria (see
below) and systems to identify and support short-term Emergency Alternative Families. These families
would provide care for a few weeks, either while efforts were made to reunite the child with its birth mother,
or while more permanent foster family care could be established. The EAFs were viewed as an important
alternative to institutional care; while in the past the only option for a mother thinking of abandoning her
child would be the Maygoma orphanage, this new programme allowed her to place her child in a family
environment and created better opportunities to maintain links with the birth parent.