Uganda

The State of Grandfamilies in America 2015 identifies key state laws and policies designed to address barriers and to better support grandparents and other relatives raising children. The report also offers recommendations to help guide the development of supportive federal and state policies and services for grandfamilies. 

A press release from the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India recapped a series of new initiatives by the Ministry during 2015. The achievements relevant to children’s care are briefly described below and include the launch of the flagship programme Beti Bachao Beto Padhao for protection of the girl child; several initiatives to track, restore, and rehabilitate missing children; and adoption reforms and a new foster care system.

Tara Winkler, a former NSW Young Australian of the Year, warns against the dangers of allowing foreign volunteers into orphanages. Ms Winkler says potential abusers are not being vetted among a high volume of visitors to Cambodia's 600 orphan

In this short video, Amanda Thorsteinsson documents the proliferation of orphanages in Uganda and the role of well-intentioned Westerners in contributing to this problem. 

A group of activists who were formerly raised in Romania's communist-era orphanages have created an association called Federeii. The group is pushing Romanian authorities to recognize and apologize for a variety of abuses committed against an estimated 500,000 children in the country's orphanages that existed before the end of the Cold War. The abuse and neglect, including physical and sexual abuse, are discussed in the article. 

The article details the abuse that is common among Malaysia's indigenous children in residential school settings. 

Professor Robbie Gilligan discusses a “policy blind spot” in Ireland resulting from a lack of data collection on the education of children in the care system, including the percentage of those children who go on to university. Ireland recently launched a new National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education 2015-2019 to improve access to education for disadvantaged groups, but the new plan is silent on the educational needs for children in care. 

The New Jersey Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case of a New Jersey indigent mother who lacked an attorney when when a judge ordered her 2-year-old daughter taken from her custody and placed with a “financially advantaged” foster family. The case will address whether some New Jersey parents are "too poor" to care for their children, whether they have a constitutional right to an attorney when their custody is being challenged in court, and whether the indigent mother should be allowed to visit her daughter even without custody. 

Since 2012, over 7,500 foster children in New South Wales, Australia have been transferred from the care of the Department of Family and Community Services to non-governmental organizations, a move that was expected to improve their wellbeing. However, recent criticism has focused on the failure to monitor and track whether this change has resulted in any improvements to the health, education, and welfare of these children. 

This systematic review identified research studies examining factors associated with service use among kinship caregivers in the US using key search terms in five computerized bibliographic databases and four journals.