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 tells the story of a 10 year-old boy who arrived to the United States unaccompanied from Honduras and who was quickly deported back to the dangerous place he had fled.
This article from BBC News describes the impacts of coronavirus lockdowns on surrogacy arrangements, particularly the separation of parents and their babies, born to surrogate mothers in Ukraine, who are unable to unite due to travel restrictions.
Child's i Foundation in Uganda has donated bicycles, smartphones, face masks and bottles of sanitizer to volunteers in Makindye division, Kampala to support them in their work to "sensitize residents about the spread of COVID-19" and so that the volunteers can "reach places that are inaccessible" and give timely reports on the needs of the community, particularly vulnerable children and families, according to this article from the Daily Monitor.
This article describes some of the challenges facing young people as they age out of foster care during the COVID-19 pandemic and notes that several U.S. states have "announced plans to extend the aging-out guideline past the age of 21 for young adults in care during the pandemic."
As part of the United Nations COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund, $1 million USD has been allocated to Georgia to protect vulnerable groups, including children, from the shocks of the current pandemic, according to this media release.
A joint report by charities Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society, Action for Children, the NSPCC and the National Children’s Bureau, warns that the COVID-19 pandemic will exacerbate existing problems in underfunded local authorities and calls on the UK Government to invest money in children’s services to stop families reaching crisis point after coronavirus, says this article from ITV News.
This article from the Thomson Reuters Foundation reports on the increase of female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia as a result of the lockdowns enacted to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
The Derry-based charity, Kinship Care, "said many of its kinship carers - where a grandparent, other relative or close friend is given guardianship of a child under sometimes quite traumatic circumstances - had been left without food and other essential aid as a result of the pandemic," according to this article from the Irish News.
This article from BBC News describes the movement of children and young people in Nigeria from Koranic schools back to their homes during the COVID-19 crisis, "one of the biggest ever state organised mass movements of minors in Africa's most-populous state."
In this opinion piece for the Hindustan Times, Lalita Panicker calls for the inclusion of children’s rights and security as a fundamental pillar in India's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to reopen the economy, noting that "there are several things the government can do, including strengthening systems to find family members of children orphaned or stranded as a result of the virus."