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.
Children in care 'failed' while some providers 'make millions'
According to Anne Longfield, the children's commissioner for England, greater use of private provision for children's residential care has led to a fragmented, uncoordinated and irrational system amid "significant profits," says this article from BBC News.
Why we must "elevate" the voices of care-experienced children - Lemn Sissay MBE
According to this article from the Yorkshire Post, "the voices of care-experienced children must be placed 'at the heart' of the Government’s independent care review, with long term funding implications to raise the ambitions of young people, a northern foster child, poet and university chancellor has said."
Experiences of foster kids
In this episode of Nightlife, the hosts talk to three young people who spent their founding years in foster care. The young people discuss the challenges they faced and how the system can be improved.
'The stolen generations era ended, but not the removal of kids': new role to protect Indigenous children
This article from the Sydney Morning Herald highlights a new position that has been created - NSW deputy guardian for Aboriginal children and young people - as part of government reforms to reduce the stark over-representation of Indigenous children in state care, and the head of the national peak body for First Nations children, Richard Weston, who will fill that role.
Calls for Victorian residential care system to be overhauled, after child sexual abuse revealed
"The Victorian Ombudsman is calling for "major reform" of the state's residential care system, after investigating allegations that five children, as young as 11, were physically and sexually assaulted while in the state's care," says this article from ABC News in Australia.
Call for government to apologise for obstructing access to mother and baby home records
"An adoptee identity rights organisation has called on the Government to commit to a national apology for the 'decades-long practice of concealing and obstructing access to records pertaining to mother and baby homes,'" according to this article from the Irish Examiner.
The boarding school ‘monster’ who always walked free
This article from BBC News tells the stories of people who experienced abuse in childhood at the hands of the head teacher at Brookside School for Maladjusted Children, a boarding school in Shropshire, UK, in the 1960s and 70s.
Doctors: Federal family separation policy amounts to ‘torture’
"The U.S. government’s policy of separating migrant children from their families at the southern border is 'cruel, inhuman,' and 'rises to the level of torture,' according to a new academic article authored by a slate of doctors throughout the country," says this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Leaving care: ‘I made it to university, but then I fell through the cracks'
"About 10,000 young people move out of the care system in the UK every year," says this article from BBC News. "For some there's a sudden cut-off with little support on the other side." In the article, Kim Emenike describes her experience of what has been described as a "care cliff".
Pandemic or no pandemic, young people should not 'age out' of care
In this article for the Guardian, Krish Kandiah argues that "any young person ready to make the step to leave home needs the safety net of a family they belong to" and calls for greater supports for young people aging out of care, particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown restrictions put in place.