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.
Child rights activists in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu have lauded the Australian government's recent inclusion of orphanage trafficking in their Modern Slavery Act and the country's efforts to cut off support to overseas orphanages, according to this article from the Times of India.
Guyana became the 100th Contracting Party to the Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention on 5 February 2019, according to this news release from the Hague Conference.
"A pilot foster care project will be undertaken over the next year as the [Jamaican] Government moves to place more children under State care in stable family settings," according to this article from the Jamaica Observer.
"A $3.05 billion class action lawsuit has been filed against the federal government for discriminating against First Nations children by "systematically" underfunding on-reserve child welfare services," according to this article from CBC News in Canada.
This opinion piece from the Irish Times explores the high rates of children and young people with care experience within the criminal justice system in Ireland, the factors that contribute to this overrepresentation, the policies (or lack thereof) addressing this issue, and the need for more information and data collection on outcomes for children and young people in care.
"Twenty-nine parents from across Central America who were separated from their children by U.S. immigration agents last year crossed the U.S. border on Saturday, demanding asylum hearings that might allow them to reunite with their children," according to this article from the Washington Post.
New York City's "foster care and juvenile justice system’s 12,000-person workforce, mostly housed at the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), has begun taking a new course exploring how subtle, unconscious prejudice – often called implicit bias – influences everything from interactions with co-workers to high-stakes child abuse and neglect investigations," according to this article from the Chronicle of Social Change.
"In each of the past four years, 1,000 or more immigrant children who arrived at the southern U.S. border without their parents have reported being sexually abused while in government custody," says this article from NPR, citing federal records that have recently been released.
"Indigenous newborns and babies less than one year old [in Western Australia] are being removed from their parents and placed into out-of-home care at increased rates," according to this article from the Guardian.
This article revists a report from February 1990 that shone light on the situation of children in orphanages in Romania and the high rate of HIV infection among them.