The Bucharest Early Intervention Project is the first randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care. The authors synthesized data from nearly 20 years of assessments of the trial to determine the overall intervention effect size across time points and developmental domains. The goal was to quantify the overall effect of the foster care intervention on children’s outcomes and examine sources of variation in this effect, including domain, age, and sex assigned at birth.

This conceptual article describes how, in terms of organization theories, shifts in the chronological transition to adulthood produce “weak” constellations of participation during the process of leaving care. The authors highlight the different degrees of participation by those leaving care and the ways in which it is expressed.

The objective of this global study was to review the current literature regarding PTSD in unaccompanied refugee minors (URM). The authors concluded that the high levels of mental health problems experienced in URM are due to exposure to traumatic experiences, separation from parents, and lack of social support.

In this policy brief published by Eurochild and UNICEF, researchers assess the 20 available European Child Guarantee National Action Plans (NAPs) and issue recommendations to examine their coverage of children in alternative care.

This regional portrait describes Catholic-sponsored care for children in Eastern Africa using data from Kenya, Malawi, Uganda and Zambia. The first large study of its kind, it focuses on children who are particularly vulnerable—those at risk of or those who have been separated from their families. Many are in institutional care. This portrait also describes growing efforts, led by women and men religious, to ensure children can grow up in safe, nurturing families or family-like environments rather than institutions.

In the U.S., youth in foster care are nearly twice as likely as war veterans to suffer from PTSD. Placed in foster care at just 11 months old, 2023 Audacious Project grantee Sixto Cancel experienced the faults of the system firsthand. Now, he's the founder of Think of Us, an organization working to reform child welfare by centering kinship care, or placing a child with an extended family member or a familiar adult. Learn more about his plan to help thousands of kids searching for a loving home with one simple, systemic switch.

This study analyzes the sequential relationships between exposure to adverse childhood experiences, trauma-related symptoms, psychological maladjustment, and the perception of group climate and peer interactions for those in out-of-home placements in Spain.

This study explored the lived experiences of mothers/fathers who secretly abandoned their children in Ethiopia.

This article looks at the strategies foster care workers employ when dealing with worldview differences between a foster family and the birth family reviewing examples from the Netherlands, Denmark and the US.

The purpose of this webinar was to launch the tool, provide background information on its development, the analysis that underpins it, and conduct a virtual walk through of the tool.

El propósito de este seminario web fue lanzar la herramienta, proporcionar información de antecedentes sobre su desarrollo, el análisis que la sustenta y realizar un recorrido virtual por la herramienta.