This Report from the international ministerial conference, held in Sofia, 21–22 November 2012, entitled 'Ending the placement of children under three in institutions: support nurturing families for all young children', brings together the presentations, political commitments and priority actions identified by the participants, including 20 governments from Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

This report documents the work conducted by Save the Children in collaboration with the Indonesian Ministry of Social Affairs over a period of 7 years to strengthen the national child protection system and change the underlying paradigm for that system away from over-reliance on residential care and towards child and family centered responses.

This report of a major conference held in New Delhi in November 2012 entitled “A Better Way to Protect ALL Children: The Theory and Practice of Child Protection Systems”, encapsulates the substantive content of the presentations and related discussion; provides an analysis and documents the journey; and suggest an agenda, or at least direction, for future work on Child Protection systems.

This audit was conducted to determine whether the Department of Social Welfare in Ghana was sufficiently regulating the operations of Residential Homes for Children (orphanages) to ensure the care and protection of children living in institutions.

The objective of this study was to determine whether children's characteristics and/or institutional characteristics were predictors of severe punishments (including beatings) and/or frequency of punishments that children received from staff in Romanian institutions. 

In her annual report to the UN General Assembly, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General highlights the results of an expert consultation on violence in early childhood. The consultation highlighted the urgency of supporting families and caregivers in their child-rearing responsibilities and securing a responsive national child protection system to strengthen families’ capacity to raise young children in safe environments and prevent child abandonment and placement in residential care.

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of residential care from the perspectives of a group of young people who had lived in residential childcare institutions in Bangladesh with a view to making improvements in residential childcare in the future.

Across China, children and young people with disabilities confront discrimination in schools.

This graphic provides a visual representation of the causal framework of children’s institutionalization in Moldova. It was developed as part of the USAID/DCOF-funded project “Protecting children in Moldova from family separation, violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.”

This article describes the historical background and current situation of the child welfare system for children without parental care in Poland.