Better Care Network highlights recent news pieces related to the issue of children's care around the world. These pieces include newspaper articles, interviews, audio or video clips, campaign launches, and more.
In this piece for the Chronicle of Social Change, Fred Wulczyn - a senior research fellow at Chapin Hall and the director of its Center for State Child Welfare Data - discusses the potential long-term impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on the U.S. child welfare system.
The Saskatchewan Youth In Care and Custody Network (SYICCN) is calling for assistance for children in government care to be kept in place until services return to pre-coronavirus levels, even if young people "age out" of those services, according to this article from CBC News.
This article from BBC News shares the story of one family from Pakistan who came to the UK to seek medical treatment for one of their children, leaving their eldest son behind with his grandmother in Pakistan. The grandmother later became ill and placed the boy in an orphanage where he is now "stuck" due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article from the Huffington Post describes the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on care leavers in Canada.
Child protection experts are worried that school closures and self-isolation efforts in place to hamper the spread of the coronavirus in the US will put children at greater risk for abuse and violence, according to this article from ABC News.
During a teleconferenced hearing, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles said she wants unaccompanied and separated immigrant children to be moved out of government-contracted facilities and to ensure they are released to suitable sponsors in an orderly fashion and aren’t put in danger, according to this article from the Associated Press.
"Unaccompanied migrant children [in Marseille and Gap] are not being given shelter and other essential services by the Bouches-du-Rhône and Hautes-Alpes departments, which are responsible for their care, putting them at risk and weakening the authorities’ response to the pandemic," says this article from Human Rights Watch.
"The coronavirus crisis is compounding the challenges for vulnerable and at-risk young people in special care, their families and care staff dealing with them, the High Court has heard," says this article from the Irish Times.
"Families and children involved with the child welfare system have begun to experience disruptions," says this article from Vox. "Courts are closing, cases are delayed, and in-person contact with social workers is severely limited. As a result, vulnerable children who are already experiencing great instability are being further destabilized."
This article from the Guardian explores some of the ways in which children in care and other vulnerable children in the UK are at greater risk in light of the COVID-19 crisis.