As child protection and family welfare become increasingly central to the global community of policymakers and practitioners seeking to encourage an optimal care environment for children’s development and well-being , key learning gaps remain concerning the best ways to support children who are without adequate parental or family care or who are at risk of becoming so. In an effort to strengthen the evidence base around the best ways to improve care for children and to reinforce global capacity to utilize this evidence, the Better Care Network, the Child Protection in Crisis Learning Network and the Child Protection Monitoring and Evaluation Reference Group (CP MERG) are initiating the Children’s Care Research Initiative and are reaching out to other leading organizations in this field to participate in this inter-agency coalition.
The CCRI is an interagency research initiative that seeks to build the evidence to inform policy and practice around children’s care. It aims to improve statistical and qualitative information about care for children in its various dimensions: the various forms of care arrangements for children, the causes and consequences of deprivation of adequate parental or family care, and the most effective policy approaches for improving children’s care in their families or in alternative family-based care environments. The initiative also recognises the strong links between children’s care and other related issues that directly and indirectly impact the capacity of parents, families, and other caregivers to ensure appropriate care for their children, including chronic poverty, migration, child labour, lack of access to education, disability, intra-familial violence, the impact of conflict, natural disasters and diseases, social exclusion and discrimination.
This concept note summarizes the need for this initiative and describes the approach to be taken, including five key components:
-
Framing and measuring the problem of children at risk of family separation or in formal and informal care.
-
Research to inform policy based on a body of evidence on the factors that undermine or strengthen the capacity of families to care appropriately for their children, the links with other major vulnerability factors and the impact of different care situations on well-being outcomes for children.
-
Measuring the impact of interventions to strengthen family-based care and ensure the most appropriate and effective alternative care arrangements for children in need of out of home care, including strategies and interventions to deinstitutionalize care and protection systems and ensure the availability of a continuum of care options.
-
Building country level research capacity to undertake policy oriented research about children at risk of family separation or in formal and informal care, and to design and implement appropriate policies and programs, including by establishing effective monitoring and regulatory systems.
-
Knowledge sharing and advocacy through research dissemination with a range of key stakeholders nationally and internationally to promote discussion and replication of good practices, and the development of a growing body of evidence that can be integrated into policies and strategies.
