The Centre for Liberation Studies, in collaboration with Chunling Lu from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Department of Population Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, is undertaking a study which aims to estimate the number of children living in institutional care globally. The study is being undertaken with financial support and guidance from the Lumos Foundation, UK.
As a first step, the researchers are conducting a systematic review of the published literature, available surveys, and unpublished literature, often called grey literature. It is regarding the review of the grey literature that they are reaching out to colleagues.
The research team is hoping to generate comprehensive reviews that include all available data and they are calling on colleagues in the field to share their research, or research they know of. The team is looking for studies which provide an estimate of the number of children living in institutions in a given area (town, city, province, country, region etc.). Estimates can be for anywhere in the world. In order to include them in the review, the studies must provide a clear definition of what is meant by institutional care, and details of the methods used to estimate the number of children living in these arrangements. Studies which look at the number of children in foster care are also of interest, but are not the primary focus of this study.
If you have any published or unpublished reports on studies that you have conducted to estimate how many children live in out-of-family care arrangements, please send them to institutionalcarereview@gmail.com.
Please also forward this request to others who you think may have access to such studies. The timeline is tight, as studies to be included in the review must be sent before the end of October 2018.
If you have any questions or concerns about sharing your unpublished or published research with this team, you are welcome to send your queries to this email address, or to contact the study lead: Chris Desmond (chrisdesmond@libstudies.com).
Your contribution to this project is very gratefully received, and much appreciated.
