Sully Santos de Uclés

Sully Santos de Uclés is an international consultant in child protection with more than twenty-five years of experience. Sully has worked in the Latin American region with governmental and non-governmental partners focused on child protection and the development of systems of care. Her work in Guatemala has spanned more than two decades and includes leadership positions in government: the office of the First Lady of Guatemala; the Secretariat of Social Welfare; and the National Council of Adoptions. In these roles, she focused on strengthening the government’s capacity to guarantee children’s rights and significantly improve child protection interventions within alternative care, reintegration, and adoption.

Sully also worked as the Director of child protection departments for several Guatemalan NGOs, implementing social and community development programs for children and families. Her work has involved child protection activities across the region including in Panama, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Honduras, San Salvador, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Colombia, Peru, and Paraguay. She recently completed a series of mappings of the child protection workforce in Mexico, Bolivia, and El Salvador. She provided technical advice to the Colombian Institute of Family Welfare (ICBF) helping redesign the National Case Management Guidelines. She is working closely with UNICEF Mexico and the Children’s Department of Mexico (DIF) to develop and finalize a package of materials to implement a Competency Standard for those engaged with children and families.

Sully is currently a long-term Technical Advisor for Changing the Way We Care in Guatemala. In this role, Sully has contributed to care reform efforts in Guatemala including direct technical assistance to various government bodies focused on improved care for children, comprehensive case management and reintegration. Highlights include publishing a study on children with disabilities in residential care with the aim of promoting reintegration and designing a strategy to expand the foster care program nationwide and promote to develop a path to integrated children into foster families during the pandemic Covid-19.