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 article sheds light on the money-making industry of orphanages and orphanage voluntourism in Cambodia.
Throughout Cambodia well-intentioned volunteers have helped to create a surge in the number of residential care homes as impoverished parents are tempted into giving up their children in response to promises of a Western-style upbringing and education. Despite a period of prosperity in the country, the number of children in orphanages has more than doubled in the past decade, and over 70 per cent of the estimated 10,000 'orphans' have at least one living parent.
When orphans in Ukraine reach adulthood, some are deemed "incapacitated" - a label that consigns them to a life in institutions. But many of these young people may have nothing wrong with them at all. It is an official classification in Ukraine that critics say strips the bearer of basic human rights.
This People & Power documentary from Al Jazeera investigates the orphanage tourism industry in Cambodia.
The Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (CELCIS), at the University of Strathclyde, has been awarded the commission for an international implementation and monitoring handbook on the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, which were approved by the UN General Assembly in 2009.The purpose of the handbook is to provide specific guidance on the how the guidelines can be practically implemented - a gap that currently exists among service providers and child protection specialists.
In the next few years, the Rwandan government hopes to close the majority of the country’s children’s homes. Rwanda’s so-called "child deinstitutionalization" (DI) policy, which, despite initial concerns, is attracting global support.
"President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf today officially launched the Children’s Law of Liberia to protect children and their right to participate meaningfully in their development," says this press release from UNICEF.
In this episode of “Crossing Continents” from BBC Radio 4, Ed Butler reports on a cycle of abuse in the orphanages of Bali, Indonesia.
"The European Union (EU), joined by its implementing partner the United Nation International Children Educational Fund (UNICEF), is supporting household families through a "Social Cash Transfer" scheme launched in the Liberian capital Monrovia on Thursday afternoon," according to this article from Almaghrib Today.
This press release from UNICEF highlights an inter-agency high-level event commemorating the two year anniversary of the introduction of the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.