Volunteering With Children: Safety Standards and What to Look For in Programs

Child safeguarding is non-negotiable. Here is what legitimate volunteer programs look like — and why orphanage volunteering is a category to avoid entirely.

Volunteering with children is one of the most meaningful things a person can do — and one of the areas where poorly designed programs cause the most harm. This article is about understanding the difference, and why the standards matter.

Child Safeguarding Frameworks

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), ratified by 196 countries, establishes children's rights to protection from exploitation and harm. At the programmatic level, organizations like UNICEF, Save the Children, and the Keeping Children Safe Coalition have developed child safeguarding standards that reputable volunteer programs should follow.

Core elements of any credible child safeguarding policy: Criminal background checks (DBS in the UK, FBI background check in the US, equivalent national checks in EU countries) for all volunteers who will have unsupervised access to children. Code of conduct governing volunteer behavior with children, including prohibited behaviors, physical contact guidelines, and digital communication rules. Safe recruitment process including reference checks and interview processes that screen for appropriate values and behavior. Incident reporting procedures that volunteers understand and are trained to use.

What UNICEF and Save the Children Recommend

Both organizations have published guidance specifically on short-term volunteering with children. The core finding: short-term volunteers in direct child-facing roles often cause more harm than good. Children in care settings — especially those who have experienced trauma, abandonment, or family separation — form attachments with adults. When volunteers rotate every few weeks, children experience repeated attachment disruptions. The appropriate role for short-term volunteers in child-serving organizations is indirect: supporting staff, infrastructure, administration, fundraising, training — not direct child care or interaction.

The Orphanage Volunteering Problem

Orphanage volunteering — paying to volunteer in residential care settings for children in low- and middle-income countries — has been extensively researched and found to be harmful. Key findings:

A 2017 report by Lumos (the NGO founded by J.K. Rowling to promote family-based alternatives to institutional care) found that the majority of children in orphanages in Cambodia, Haiti, and Kenya had at least one living parent — they had been placed there specifically because the institution attracted foreign donations and volunteer fees. The economic incentive creates perverse outcomes: children are recruited into institutional care not because they need it, but because institutions generate revenue from volunteers and donors. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has explicitly criticized orphanage volunteering.

The appropriate alternative: support organizations that provide family-based care (kinship care, foster care, family strengthening programs) or that provide community-based services allowing children to stay with their families. SOS Children's Villages, which has moved away from institutional models toward family-strengthening, is one example of an organization that has responded to this evidence.

What Good Programs Look Like

Indicators of a genuinely safe and effective child-focused volunteer program: the program is designed by local organizations, not primarily by the overseas volunteer coordinator; volunteers spend significant time in orientation and training before direct work; the volunteer role is clearly defined with safeguarding protocols explained; local staff are the primary relationship-holders with children, with volunteers in a supporting or supplementary role; program duration is at least 3 months for roles involving direct child contact; the organization can explain clearly how the program contributes to child outcomes, not just volunteer satisfaction.

Trauma-Informed Approaches

Many children served by volunteer programs have experienced trauma: poverty, abuse, family separation, conflict, or displacement. Trauma-informed care recognizes that children's behaviors are responses to their experiences, not character defects. Volunteers in child-facing roles should receive basic trauma-informed care training — what it means, how it affects behavior, and what regulatory responses look like versus dysregulation. Organizations not providing this training for child-facing volunteers are not operating to adequate safeguarding standards.

FAQ

Q: I want to volunteer at an orphanage because I genuinely care about the children there. Is there any way to do this responsibly?
A: The honest answer is that "orphanage volunteering" as a category is deeply problematic regardless of individual motivation. The best way to help children in institutional care is to support the organizations working to transition those children to family-based care — not to reinforce the institutional model by volunteering within it. Lumos, Better Care Network, and SOS Children's Villages all work on family reintegration and are appropriate organizations to support financially or as a volunteer in non-direct-care roles.

Q: My country requires a DBS check / criminal background check for working with children. If I volunteer abroad, is the same standard applied?
A: Standards vary significantly. Some reputable international programs (VSO, Peace Corps, ICS) do require equivalent checks for international placements in child-facing roles. Many programs do not. If a program placing you in direct work with children does not ask for any background check, this is a significant red flag — both for your protection and for the children's. Ask explicitly: "What safeguarding checks do you conduct on volunteers working with children?"

Find child-focused organizations committed to genuine safeguarding at Good People Map.