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.
This newsletter from RELAF provides an update on recent activities and news relating to alternative care in Latin America.
Tara Winkler, a former NSW Young Australian of the Year, warns against the dangers of allowing foreign volunteers into orphanages. Ms Winkler says potential abusers are not being vetted among a high volume of visitors to Cambodia's 600 orphanages and children's residential care centres. 
A group of activists who were formerly raised in Romania's communist-era orphanages have created an association called Federeii. The group is pushing Romanian authorities to recognize and apologize for a variety of abuses committed against an estimated 500,000 children in the country's orphanages that existed before the end of the Cold War. The abuse and neglect, including physical and sexual abuse, are discussed in the article.
The article details the abuse that is common among Malaysia's indigenous children in residential school settings.
Professor Robbie Gilligan discusses a “policy blind spot” in Ireland resulting from a lack of data collection on the education of children in the care system, including the percentage of those children who go on to university. Ireland recently launched a new National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education 2015-2019 to improve access to education for disadvantaged groups, but the new plan is silent on the educational needs for children in care.
The New Jersey Supreme Court announced that it will hear the case of a New Jersey indigent mother who lacked an attorney when when a judge ordered her 2-year-old daughter taken from her custody and placed with a “financially advantaged” foster family. The case will address whether some New Jersey parents are "too poor" to care for their children, whether they have a constitutional right to an attorney when their custody is being challenged in court, and whether the indigent mother should be allowed to visit her daughter even without custody.
Since 2012, over 7,500 foster children in New South Wales, Australia have been transferred from the care of the Department of Family and Community Services to non-governmental organizations, a move that was expected to improve their wellbeing. However, recent criticism has focused on the failure to monitor and track whether this change has resulted in any improvements to the health, education, and welfare of these children.
In Cambodia's booming orphanage industry, children have become money-making tourist attractions, and it is suspected that sexual abuse is common in residential centres where there are few checks to identify child abusers among foreign volunteers.
The Independent Review Panel on UN Response to Allegations of Sexual Abuse by Foreign Military Forces in the Central African Republic released a report detailing the United Nations' "gross institutional failure" to act on allegations that French and other peacekeepers sexually abused childre
This article discusses a new set of standards for orphanages that the Cambodian Ministry of Social Affairs plans to begin enforcing. The new standards (known as the sub-decree on the management of residential care centers) are part of an effort to move towards family- and community-based care rather than institutionalization.