Institutional care for children is harmful by definition and violates children’s human rights. Ending institutional care has been a key item on the international agenda for several decades. Much has become known about the lifelong harms of institutional care, more recently revealed through compelling testimonies of victims and survivors of institutional care which have been the driving force behind effective movements advocating for change, bravely holding governments and children’s service agencies to account. The possibilities and scale of the systems change efforts to reform children’s alternative care is increasingly better understood, through examples of positive reforms underway globally.
Drawing on the panel and discussions at the Global Study’s Global Conference on Justice for Children Deprived of Liberty 2024 Geneva event, this chapter outlines key elements required for deinstitutionalisation for effective children’s care reforms that are accountable to children. It proposes a two-pronged approach of systems change reforms reinforced by accountability mechanisms to achieve this for children in institutions specifically for care purposes. It outlines critical components of systems transformation approaches and outlines approaches to achieve accountability for children’s rights to pursue and secure crucial human rights-based changes. It concludes by offering a set of Roadmap accelerator actions to advance the pace of change, framed within active global policy contexts and opportunities.