The Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s The Way Forward Project brought together a group of international experts to discuss opportunities and challenges facing governmental and non-governmental organization leaders in six African nations (Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, and Uganda) as they work to develop systems of care that serve children in and through their families.

Save the Children Sweden commissioned this follow-up study to explore to what extent in South Africa, African customary law and practice promotes and/or inhibits the protection of children; how the positive impacts can be harnessed for the greater protection of more children; how the negative impacts can be mitigated; and finally how and who should be at the helm of any necessary developments of African customary law.

This report reviews Malawi’s national response for children affected by HIV and AIDS. The report notes significant progress made in improving the lives of children affected by HIV and AIDS and offers key recommendations for further improvements to national policies and strategies.

Parental leave and early childhood education and care have gained a high profile in child and family policy fields, and both have been the subject of substantial cross-national mapping, describing and comparing their main features across a range of countries. This article provides overviews on parental leave and early childhood services in affluent countries, and reflections on this mapping.

The papers collected in this issue provide a contemporary perspective on comparative child and family policy, highlighting new developments and current challenges for research and policy.

This paper highlights a number of recurrent issues that help to illuminate and explain the differences that persist between France and Germany in spite of recent reform efforts in child & family policies and evaluates the success of these policies and whether they have achieved their desired effects on mothers' employment patterns, especially those of qualified female workers.

This study explores the development of “state of the child” reports between 2000 and 2010 in an effort to not only quantify the development but also to understand the shifts and changes in the field.

A comparative analysis of child welfare systems in 10 countries identifies three broad functional orientations – child protection, family service and child development.

Abstract

This paper presents the historical background for the development of child care in the Nordic countries, it presents some basic figures on child care take and take up of leave schemes as well as figures on child poverty in the Nordic countries.