The Kenyan government has revealed a 10-year plan to remove orphaned and vulnerable children from children's homes and orphanages, and transition them to family and community-based care.

The strategy, developed with the support of UNICEF and a multisectoral Care Reform Core Team, under the leadership of the National Council for Children’s Services (NCCS), seeks to guide national steps towards prevention and family strengthening, robust alternative family care, and tracing, reintegration and transitioning from institutional care to family and community-based care for all children in need of care and protection. It sets out areas of focus for various agencies in the sector for the next ten years and calls for collaborative effort and active coordination to achieve collective impact approach.

This is a recording of the first session in a webinar series celebrating the launch of of a themed issue of Global Childhood Studies journal (Volume.2; Issue.1). This first webinar focuses on Responding to varied experiences of childhood separation.

Children living in care institutions such as orphanages, safe houses, and even street children, will now have the opportunity to be cared for by family units. This is after the Kenya Ministry of Gender, Public Service and Special Programmes launched a National Care Reform strategy in partnership with Child Rights organizations.

Kenya on Wednesday launched a care reform strategy to boost the rights of children, a senior government official said. Margaret Kobia, Cabinet Secretary in the Ministry of Public Service, Gender, Senior Citizens Affairs, and Special Programmes said that the strategy was developed with the support of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and provides a roadmap to prevent the separation of children from their parents through family strengthening programs.

The UK Home Office has been accused of attempting to deport unaccompanied 16-year-olds to Rwanda in the first wave of asylum seekers to be sent to east Africa later this month. Charities have identified what they describe as a “worrying pattern” of children being classed as adults by Home Office age assessments, raising fears they could be among those deported 4,500 miles to Rwanda.

Institutional childcare is associated with developmental delays and setbacks. Since alternative options are not always available, it is important to investigate youth in institutional settings to evaluate how to provide optimal care.

This is the monthly update of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Learning Platform published in June 2022. 

This report captures the learning at a two-day conference which brought together practitioners and specialists for a critical examination of the Theology and Practice of Child Protection in Africa in Nairobi on May 23 - 24, 2022.

This webinar presents the findings from the stage one analysis of the legal, policy and procedural frameworks of orphanage trafficking in Cambodia, Uganda, and Nepal. It also featured presentations on the situation of orphanage trafficking from in-country investigators and experts.