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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Progress for Every Child in the SDG era

UNICEF , 06 Mar 2018

This report from UNICEF assesses the world’s performance towards meeting the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to date, focusing on 44 indicators that directly concern 2030’s most important constituency: children.

The schooling of orphans and their lives in Malawi : A case study of continued schooling of orphans in secondary education

Hikaru Kusakabe - Osaka Human Sciences, 01 Mar 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate how orphans in secondary schools, especially those in the low-income class in society, manage to continue their education.

Child Living Conditions and Orphanhood Status in Uganda: an Extension of the Application of the Intrinsic Value Approach to Child Poverty Measurement

Cyprian Misinde - Child Indicators Research, 23 Feb 2018

In this study Child Living Conditions which take on many dimensions are computed using the intrinsic value approach. The authors tested the hypothesis that the average living conditions of orphans were less than the average living conditions of non-orphans in Uganda in 2011.

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Interrupted childhoods: Over-representation of Indigenous and Black children in Ontario child welfare

Ontario Human Rights Commission, 01 Feb 2018

This report explores the over-representation of Indigenous and Black children in the child welfare system in Ontario.

Parental incarceration and child outcomes: Those at risk, evidence of impacts, methodological insights, and areas of future work

Anna R. Haskins, Mariana Amorim, Meaghan Mingo - Sociology Compass, 29 Jan 2018

In this review, the authors briefly outline who is most at risk for experiencing parental incarceration, before providing an overview of recent multidisciplinary research on the impacts of parental incarceration for American children, ages 0–17.

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Social work, poverty, and child welfare interventions

Kate Morris, Will Mason, Paul Bywaters, Brid Featherstone, Brigid Daniel, Geraldine Brady, Lisa Bunting, Jade Hooper, Nughmana Mirza, Jonathan Scourfield, Calum Webb - Child & Family Social Work, 17 Jan 2018

This article, based on a unique mixed‐methods study of social work interventions in the UK and the influence of poverty, highlights a narrative from practitioners that argues that, as many poor families do not harm their children, it is stigmatizing to discuss a link between poverty and child abuse and neglect.

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The phenomenon of social risk families and its dynamics in Lithuania

Vide Gudzinskiene and Rimvydas Augutavicius - International Conference of Society Health and Welfare, 2018

The objective of this article is to analyze the phenomenon of social risk families and its trends in Lithuania.

In Limbo: Exploring income and housing barriers for reunifying Tasmanian families

Lindsey Fidler - Anglicare Tasmania, Social Action and Research Centre, 2018

This report looks at the nature and extent of the income and housing challenges faced by Tasmanian families who have had children removed by Child Safety Services, and the impacts those challenges may have on positive family reunification outcomes.

Understanding the experience and outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care during the Twentieth Century

Elizabeth Fernandez, Jung-Sook Lee and Patricia McNamara - UNSW Sydney, 2018

This report details a component of the UNSW national Long-term Outcomes of Forgotten Australians Study reported in No child should grow up like this which explored the in-care and after-care experiences of adults who spent their childhoods in institutions and foster care during the period 1930 to 1989. In this report, the focus is on Stolen Generations survivors and other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals who participated in the research.

Explaining the Economic Disparity Gap in the Rate of Substantiated Child Maltreatment in Canada

David Rothwell, Jaime Wegner-Lohin, Elizabeth Fast, Kaila de Boer, Nico Trocmé, Barbara Fallon, and Tonino Esposito - Journal of Law and Social Policy, 2018

The purpose of this study is to understand the prevalence of economic hardship in the child welfare system and explain the economic disparity gap.