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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The Problem of Street Children in Africa: An Ignored Tragedy

Peter Kopoka, 2000

Examines initiatives taken to protect street children in Africa. Emphasis on increasing community and NGO participation in local responses.

The Impact of the Bolivian SOS Social Centers

Nancy Ardaya Salinas, 2000

Extensive report on the institutional- and family-level impacts of SOS Social Centers in Bolivia. Includes recommendations and lessons learned.

Children Without Parents - A Ghanaian Case Study

Nana Apt - Centre for Social Policy Studies, University of Ghana, 01 May 1997

This chapter provides an overview of a child care institution, the Osu Children’s Home, in Ghana.

Bringing Them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission - Commonwealth of Australia, 1997

This report from Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission aimed to trace the past laws, practices and policies which resulted in the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families by compulsion, duress or undue influence, and the effects of those laws, practices and policies.

Every Last Child: Reaching children living in the remote areas of Uganda Policy Brief

Save the Children,

This Policy Brief focuses on children living in the remote areas of Uganda and looks at the challenges these children face in attaining their rights to survival, learning and protection.