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 411 - 420 of 507

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The Impact of Child Detention: Occupied Palestinian Territory

Save the Children Sweden & East Jerusalem YMCA Rehabilitation Program, 2012

This report aims at giving an insight into the treatment of children in armed conflict, with a primary focus on children in detention.

Child Rights in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Keeping Families Together: Making social protection more effective for children

Peroline Ainsworth, Elena Gaia, Anna Nordenmark Severinsson, 2012

This edition of Insights produced by UNICEF summarizes the findings and recommendations of studies on the impact and outreach of social protection systems in Albania, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine where high rates of child placement in formal care still persist. The research offers important insight into the weaknesses and challenges faced by social protection systems in the region, but also point to ways in which policy-makers might maximise the impact of social protection systems in order to ‘keep families together’.

Child Abandonment and its Prevention in Europe: Slovakian Language Summary Brochure

University of Nottingham, UK, 31 Dec 2011

This document is a Slovakian language summary brochure of the Manual of Best Practice titled ‘Child Abandonment and its Prevention in Europe,’ specific to child abandonment in Slovakia.

Child poverty in cross-national perspective: Lessons from the Luxembourg Income Study

Janet C. Gornick & Markus Jäntti - Children and Youth Services Review, 17 Oct 2011

This paper draws on the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) microdata to paint a portrait of child poverty across a diverse group of countries, as of 2004–2006.

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Social protection and children in developing countries

Shirley Gatenio Gabel - Children and Youth Services Review, 14 Oct 2011

This paper looks at how social protection is evolving in developing countries and how it relates to the vulnerabilities of children. It goes on to present the different conceptual models for protection and how they have changed and been influenced by the changing definition of poverty and the growth in transnational knowledge and policymaking.

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From comparative to global social policy: Lessons for development practitioners from UNICEF's Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities

Gáspár Fajth, Sólrún Engilbertsdóttir, Sharmila Kurukulasuriya - Children and Youth Services Review, 14 Oct 2011

This paper attempts to look at the responsiveness of global social policy to addressing multidimensional child poverty, through the experience of UNICEF's Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities.

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Child-sensitive social protection in DRC: A diagnostic study

Sarah Bailey, Paola Pereznieto and Nicola Jones with Bavon Mupenda, Grazia Pacillo and Mathieu Tromme - Overseas Development Institute, 01 May 2011

This study analyzed the current social protection environment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and examined the “vulnerabilities and risks facing children living in poverty in Kinshasa, Bas Congo and Katanga provinces.”

Push and Pull Factors of Institutionalization of Children: A Study Based in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka

Nirekha De Silva and Asitha G. Punchihewa , 2011

This research on the institutionalization of children in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka was carried out by Save the Children with the support of the Department of Probation and Children Care Services and National Institute of Social Development.

Child Protection in the Philippines: A Situational Analysis

Save the Children , 2011

This situational analysis was commissioned by the Child Protection Initiative as a preliminary exercise to develop evidence-based recommendations to guide Save the Children in the Philippines to develop interventions. Priority areas are children in residential care, children in armed conflict and disasters, children in situations of migration (including for trafficking purposes), and children in exploitative and hazardous work conditions.

HIV - Sensitive Social Protection: What Does the Evidence Say?

UNAIDS, 30 Dec 2010

Shows how HIV-sensitive social protection can reduce vulnerability to HIV infection, improve and extend the lives of people living with HIV, and support individuals and households. While not specific to children, the paper includes sections on HIV and Child Protection and HIV and Early Childhood Development.