Children Affected by Poverty and Social Exclusion

Around the world, poverty and social exclusion are driving factors behind the placement of children into alternative care. Families give up their children because they are too poor to care for them, or they feel that it is the best way to help them to access basic services such as education and health care. Discrimination and cultural taboos mean that girls, children with disabilities, ethnic minorities, children with HIV/AIDS and children born out of wedlock, make up a disproportionate number of children abandoned into alternative care.

Poor-quality alternative care leads to a vicious cycle of poverty and inequality. With limited family-based alternative care options in many countries, children often end up in institutional care. Already marginalized by poverty or stigmatization, they risk becoming further excluded from society, as they grow up separated from their families and communities. In the worst cases, inadequate or unsafe care standards expose them to neglect, violence and abuse. When they eventually leave institutional care, young adults may then struggle to reintegrate into their communities and face high rates of homelessness, unemployment, chronic poverty, depression and even suicide.

Greater political and financial commitment is needed to tackle the poverty and social exclusion that drives families to give up their children. This includes wide-ranging measures to combat poverty, discrimination and stigmatization, to change attitudes towards single parenthood and disability, and to adopt social policies promoting family empowerment and parenting skills. Greater priority must also be given to developing good-quality family-based care options, such as foster care and adoption, for the girls and boys who need alternative families.

The documents in this section examine the relationship between poverty, social exclusion and placement of children in alternative care.

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The severity, consequences and risk factors of child abuse in China – An empirical Study of 5836 children in China's mid-western regions

Qi Di, Wang Yongjie, Wan Guowei - Children and Youth Services Review, 28 Oct 2018

Based on empirical studies of 5836 children in six provinces of China's Mid-Western regions, this paper contributes to existing knowledge by analyzing the severity, consequences and risk factors of child abuse.

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Country Care Review: Bulgaria

Better Care Network, 22 Oct 2018

This country care review includes the care-related Concluding Observations adopted by the Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

A socioecological approach to children’s experiences of violence: Evidence from Young Lives

Kirrily Pells, Virginia Morrow, M. Catherine Maternowska & Alina Potts - Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies: An International Interdisciplinary Journal for Research, Policy and Care, 20 Oct 2018

This paper highlights findings from a a 15-year longitudinal cohort study of children growing up in poverty in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam.

Entangled Roots: The Role of Race in Policies that Separate Families

Elisa Minoff - Center for the Study of Social Policy, 01 Oct 2018

By examining the roots of policies that separate families and their entanglement with racial prejudice and discrimination, this report makes the case that we must embrace an alternative path.

Assessment of the Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty programme in Karaga district, Ghana

Mohammed Sulemana, Bukari Francis Issahaku Malongza and Mohammed Abdulai - Development in Practice, 04 Sep 2018

This article assesses the contribution of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme in reducing rural poverty in the Karaga district of Northern Ghana, using a mixed research design to compare the livelihoods of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries.

A scoping study of Indigenous child welfare: The long emergency and preparations for the next seven generations

Wendy Haight, Cary Waubanascum, David Glessener, Scott Marsalis - Children and Youth Services Review, 20 Aug 2018

This scoping study yielded 37 empirical studies published in peer-reviewed journals addressing one of the most pressing, sensitive, and controversial issues facing child welfare policymakers and practitioners today: the dramatic overrepresentation of Indigenous families in North American public child welfare systems.

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Understanding child neglect in Aboriginal families and communities in the context of trauma

BJ Newton - Child & Family Social Work, 20 Jul 2018

This paper argues that to meet the needs of Aboriginal families and communities where there is child neglect, policy and practice needs to acknowledge and address the impact of trauma in shaping the lived experiences of Aboriginal people.

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The moderating effects of ethnicity on key predictors of trauma in child welfare involved adolescents

Micki Washburn, L. Christian Carr, Alan J. Dettlaff - Journal of Adolescence, 04 Jul 2018

In this study, key predictors of trauma were examined using a multi-group analysis of a nationally representative sample of 716 child welfare involved youth ages 11–17.

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Shaping Cash Transfer Impacts Through ‘Soft-Conditions’: Evidence from Lesotho

Noemi Pace, Silvio Daidone, Benjamin Davis, Luca Pellerano - Journal of African Economies, 28 Jun 2018

This paper focuses on the role of ‘soft conditionality’ implemented through both ‘labelling’ and ‘messaging’ in evaluating the impact of the Child Grants Program in Lesotho, an unconditional cash transfer programme targeting poor households with orphans and vulnerable children.

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Using time-to-event analysis to identify preconception and prenatal predictors of child protective services contact

Anna E. Austin, Jared W. Parrish, Meghan E. Shanahan - Child Abuse & Neglect, 02 Jun 2018

This study examined preconception and prenatal predictors of time to first child protective services (CPS) contact among Alaska children.

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