In January, 2024, UNICEF announced that across European and central Asian countries, family-based care has become the dominant type of alternative care for children without available parents.
This is a comment on the the report Pathways to Better Protection which gives promising indication that deinstitutionalisation policies are closing residential housing facilities and that increasingly, with the exception of children with disabilities, children are less likely to find themselves in residential care.
On this basis, UNICEF calls for continued investment in family-based arrangements and deinstitutionalisation.
