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.

Displaying 101 - 110 of 505

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Screening for economic hardship for child welfare-involved families during the COVID-19 pandemic: A rapid partnership response

Barbara Fallon, et al - Child Abuse & Neglect, 04 Sep 2020

The objective of this paper is to report on the development and implementation strategy of a tool to be used for practice intervention during the pandemic.

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Don’t Let Me Fall Through the Cracks: Homelessness amongst Care-Experienced Young People in Wales

Sharon Lovell - End Youth Homelessness Cymru, 01 Sep 2020

This report is based on the voices and experiences of care experienced young people who have been, or are currently, homeless across Wales. The aim of this research is to amplify these young people’s voices to highlight the challenges they have faced when homeless and the need for reform of systems which have failed to prevent their homelessness.

The Hidden Impact of COVID-19 on Child Poverty

Lavinia Loperfido, Melissa Burgess, Nicole Dulieu, Chiara Orlassino, Munshi Sulaiman, Silvia Mila Arlini - Save the Children International, 01 Sep 2020

This report is one in a series presenting findings from the Global COVID-19 Research Study. The results presented in this report focus on implications for child poverty.

Racial disparities in child welfare in Ontario (Canada) and training on ethnocultural diversity: An innovative mixed-methods study

Jude Mary Cénat, Pari-Gole Noorishad, Konrad Czechowski, Sara-Emilie McIntee, Joana N. Mukunzi - Child Abuse & Neglect, 26 Aug 2020

This study aimed to explore questions relating to caseworker’s training on ethnocultural diversity in connection with racial disparities and overrepresentation of Black children in child welfare services.

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Intergenerational Transmission of Poverty: The Role of Agency in Mitigating the Impact for Child-Headed Households - A Case of Zola, Soweto (South Africa)

Leonard Munyaradzi Agere and Marilyn Agere - African Journal of Social Work, 15 Aug 2020

This study explored child headed households (CHH) in South Africa.

Reunification for young children of color with substance removals: An intersectional analysis of longitudinal national data

Margaret H. Lloyd Sieger - Child Abuse & Neglect, 13 Aug 2020

This study sought to determine number and proportion of children of color with substance removals and whether disparities exist in likelihood of reunification compared to white children.

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Barriers and solutions: Australian Indigenous practitioners on addressing disproportionate representation of Indigenous Australian children known to statutory child protection

Fiona Oates - AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 08 Aug 2020

This article outlines the views of Indigenous practitioners collected as part of a doctoral study exploring the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners who undertake child protection work in Australia.

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Parental drug use and racial and ethnic disproportionality in the U.S. foster care system

Angélica Meinhofer, Erica Onuoha, Yohanis Angleró-Díaz, Katherine M. Keyes - Children and Youth Services Review, 08 Aug 2020

This study explored the prevalence of racial/ethnic disproportionality and disparity in parental drug use (PDU) foster care entries and described children characteristics across racial/ethnic populations.

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Has the US Child Welfare System Become an Informal Income Maintenance Programme? A Literature Review

Aislinn Conrad, Casey Gamboni, Victoria Johnson, Armeda Stevenson Wojciak, Megan Ronnenberg - Child Abuse Review, 03 Aug 2020

This literature review examined the extent to which the US child welfare system acts as an informal income maintenance programme.

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National Agreement on Closing the Gap

Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations & Australian Governments, 27 Jul 2020

The objective of this Agreement is to overcome the entrenched inequality faced by too many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people so that their life outcomes are equal to all Australians. Target 12 of this Agreement is to "by 2031, reduce the rate of over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care by 45 per cent."