This country care review includes the Concluding Observations for the Committee on the Rights of the Child adopted as part of its examination of Vietnam’s combined third and fourth periodic reports at the 60th Session of the Committee held between 9 May and 15 June 2012. The Committee’s recommendations on the issue of Family Environment and Alternative Care as well as other care relevant issues are highlighted.

Zero to Three, a US based non profit organization working to inform, train and support professionals, policy makers and parents to improve the lives of infants and toddlers, combined the evidence from research on early childhood development with feedback from focus groups with families, friends, and neighbors who act as care givers to develop a range of practical resources to strengthen care practices with children between the ages of 0 and 3.

The USA-based National Child Traumatic Stress Network has recently released a second edition of the Child Welfare Trauma Training Toolkit, which is part of the Child Welfare Trauma Training course. The course assists those in the field of child welfare who wish to learn more about child welfare and trauma.

The Child Protection System Guidelines were developed to address the fragmented response to child protection in Kenya and guide actors at the county level to deliver more coordinated and professional services for children and their families. 

This guide is for people who work with children and young people in places of alternative care. It is intended to assist you in understanding and supporting the rights of children you work with.

This presentation to the 2012 Sofia Conference by the Kuan Sabi Program, in Kazakhstan suggests ways to improve the knowledge and skills of Primary Health Care workers that care for children under the age of 3.

This research paper provides a brief overview of the Vietnam Babylift and of a more recent child abduction attempt in Chad. Then, turning to the history of child abduction and adoption history in Latin America, the paper presents the conflicts of El Salvador and Argentina and discusses ‘living disappeared’ children – those who disappear into adoption networks during war. The research explores the post-conflict social realities in both nations. The role of the social worker and specific practices are identified and discussed in context of generalist social work practice.

The chapters in this book discuss the complexity immediately encountered when approaching the task of improving the lives of Looked After Children (LAC).

Helping families and their kin develop care plans for orphaned and vulnerable children was the objective of the family group conferencing (FGC) training that took place in Guatemala City from July 10-12, 2012. This family preservation approach for developing strategies to prevent the institutionalization of children emphasizes the strengths of families and their capacity to solve their own problems and develop their own care plans.

This report is the result 4 of a two-year EU funded project “An Early Years Support Centre (EYSC) service in Dushanbe: Reducing poverty, empowering vulnerable families, strengthening partnerships and advocating for rights”. It outlines the model of support that was developed through the EYSC project in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.