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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HIV/AIDS, declining family resources and the community safety net

Jody Heymann and Rachel Kidman - AIDS Care, 01 Aug 2009

This study uses recent data from published studies in sub-Saharan Africa to illustrate deficits and document community responses for children who have lost parents to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

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Analysis of the Progress and Remaining Challenges in Child Care System Reform: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan

UNICEF, Natalia Lyalina and Anna Nordenmark Severinsson, 21 May 2009

Developed by the UNICEF Regional Office for Central and Eastern Europe/Commonwealth of Independent States as a discussion paper for the 2nd Child Protection Forum on Building and Reforming Child Care Systems

Forced Removal of Romani Children from the Care of their Families

European Roma Rights Center, 08 May 2009

Explores particular vulnerabilities that arise for Roma children and families in regards to care as a result of social marginalization

Promoting Synergies between Child Protection and Social Protection: West and Central Africa

UNICEF Regional Office for West and Central Africa, 01 Feb 2009

Focuses on children’s vulnerabilities and risks related to an absence of protection from violence, abuse and neglect, and the ways in which measures to address such vulnerabilities and risks can be more effectively integrated into social protection policy frameworks in the West and Central Africa region.

Home Truths: Facing the Facts on Children, AIDS, and Poverty

Joint Learning Initiative on Children and HIV/AIDS, 01 Feb 2009

Evaluates a number of fundamental misperceptions that have undermined the global response to children affected by the epidemic, and sets out evidence on how to better respond to their needs.

Life Improvement, Life Satisfaction and Care Arrangement Among AIDS Orphans in Rural Henan, China

Qun Zhao, Xiaoming Li, Xiaoyi Fang, Bonita Stanton, Guoxiang Zhao, Junfeng Zhao, and Liying Zhang, 20 Jan 2009

This study aims to compare perceived life improvement and life satisfaction among double orphans in 3 main care arrangements (group home, AIDS orphanage, kinship care) in 2 rural Chinese counties.

Manual for the Measurement of Indicators for Children in Formal Care

Better Care Network and UNICEF, 2009

Manual to assist countries in strengthening their information system around children in formal care through data collection around 15 global indicators

Why Do Separated Children Matter? A Policy Briefing Paper

EveryChild, 01 Nov 2008

Evaluation of the need for increased understanding and inclusive responses to highly marginalized and separated children.

Perspectives for Social Protection in West and Central Africa

Anthony Hodges, UNICEF, 01 Oct 2008

Assesses constraints and opportunities for social protection programming regionally with particular consideration for child sensitive social protection.

Climate change and urban children: Impacts and implications for adaptation in low- and middle-income countries

Sheridan Bartlett - Human Settlements Programme, International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), 01 Aug 2008

This paper discusses the probable impacts for children of different ages from the increasing risk of storms, flooding, landslides, heat waves, drought and water supply constraints that climate change is likely to bring to most urban centres in Africa, Asia and Latin America.