SoDear
Child & Family Welfare Systems Reform

Building systems that keep families together.

SoDear is a specialist consultancy working with governments, NGOs, and donors across West Africa to redesign how vulnerable children and families are supported. Moving from institutional models toward community-led, family-centred approaches that actually hold.

What we do

Specialist work, grounded in practice.

01

Deinstitutionalisation & Family Reintegration

We support governments and organisations transitioning children from institutional care to family-based alternatives. Reintegration planning, case management design, and implementation support drawn from proven experience.

02

Welfare Programme Design

We apply human-centred design methods to build welfare programmes that reflect the lived realities of families, communities, and frontline practitioners. We start with people, not assumptions.

03

Practitioner Tools & Capacity

We design case management systems, field guides, and training resources built for real conditions. Tools that practitioners actually use because they were designed with practitioners, not handed down.

04

Strategic Advisory

We provide experienced counsel to donors and implementing organisations on programme design and welfare system reform strategy. We speak the language of policy and the language of the field.

Our story

SoDear did not begin in a boardroom. It began with a conviction held since 2015, that the communities most affected by poverty and marginalisation are not passive recipients of development. They are its most capable agents.

That conviction has been tested and sharpened through years of practice. Closing orphanages and reintegrating hundreds of children into family care across northern Ghana. Designing systems that centre people rather than institutions. SoDear is where those two bodies of work converge.

“
The poor and marginalised of any society are capable of more than passive learning. Given the opportunity, they can think critically about and engage the world around them in a way that can transform both themselves and their world.
Paulo Freire
Work with us

Let's build something that holds.

We work with governments, NGOs, and donors who are serious about reforming child and family welfare systems. If that's you, we'd like to hear from you.

SoDear · Tamale, Ghana
© 2026 SoDear · Abdul-Rahman Gbana Iddrisu · Ahmed Saalim Iddrisu