This special issue of the Journal of Global Social Welfare grew out of a 2014 symposium co-hosted by the Better Care Network and the CPC Learning Network, an event that convened a number of leading academics, policymakers, and practitioners involved in the development or implementation of key initiatives to better measure issues of children's care at country, regional, and international levels. This special issue of Global Social Welfare represents an effort to present state-of-the-art learning about how to measure issues related to children's care in a way that informs more effective policies and programs. The following articles are included in this special issue:
Measuring Better Care: Building the Evidence to Inform Policy and Practice Around Children's Care
This editorial piece from the Journal of Global Social Welfare - co-authored by Florence Martin, director of Better Care Network, and Mark Canavera, associate director of the CPC Learning Network - introduces the journal's special issue on measuring children's care arrangements.
Section 1: Measuring trends in families and children's care and living arrangements
This paper, by Florence Martin and Garazi Zulaika, offers an analysis on orphanhood and living arrangements data based on available DHS and MICS surveys from 77 countries from sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, North Africa/West Asia/and Europe, Central Asia, and South and Southeast Asia. The paper argues that better use and mining of existing national household surveys, particularly the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) and Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys (MICS), has great potential to inform child protection policy and programming. The data that point to who children live with, if their parents are living, and why they may be separated from their parents are particularly relevant to children's care issues.
Measuring Children's Care Arrangements and Their Educational and Health Outcomes Internationally
This essay, by Mindy E. Scott & Elizabeth Karberg, summarizes efforts to measure trends in children's care arrangements in two regions of the world-Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. The results from the World Family Map project, an annual report that seeks to monitor the health of family life around the globe, are presented.
Section 2: Determining the effectiveness of policies and programs
Early Family Support Interventions: Creating Context for Success
The purpose of this commentary by Deborah Daro is to articulate why focusing on both program and context offers policymakers a more promising pathway for achieving meaningful and sustainable improvements in a child's well-being and healthy development.
The Value-Added Impact of Fast-Track Adoption Policy on Adoption Rates
This paper, by Fred Wulczyn et al, examines whether policies that guide the termination of parental rights correspond to state adoption rate differences in the United States. Results suggest that policies targeting the termination of parental rights do not account for differences in state adoption rates.
The purpose of this study, by Andrew M. Muriuki et al, was to examine the impact that the use of a Community Caregiver service provision model had on outcomes for children orphaned or made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS in Côte d'Ivoire.
Section 3: Improving learning about children in alternative care
A Forgotten Population: Estimating the Number of Children Outside of Households in Cambodia
This manuscript, by Beth L. Rubenstein and Lindsay Stark, reviews the issues facing children outside of households and argues for the importance of gathering robust data about this population to formulate responsive policies and services, mobilize resources, and foster accountability. Cambodia is highlighted to illustrate the recent work that the government has undertaken to quantify two key subgroups of children outside of households: children living in residential care institutions and homeless children living on the street or in other public places.
This study, by Mónica Ruiz-Casares and Saithong Phommavong, explores the determinants of child-parent separation and the consequences of existing alternative care arrangements from the perspectives of adults and young people in Laos.
Using Child Well-Being Assessments to Track Progress in Family-Based Reintegration
This paper, by Su Lyn Corcoran and Joanna Wakia, reflects upon lessons learned by Retrak in their work with children living or working on the street and explores the challenges and the benefits of developing a body of evidence on reintegration good practice.
