An April 7 court ruling by Justice Joel Ngugi of the Nakuru law courts said fathers can be granted custody of young children.

Engaging with key stakeholders is an essential part of any transition and must be handled with tact and wisdom. Located in South Africa, the organization Beautiful Gate began its ministry to protect street children and later grew to provide residential programs for children in need. Yet, as they began to learn more about the needs of children in families, they decided to shift away from residential care and expand their services to include the families of the children they served. This case study summary explains how Beautiful Gate communicated these changes with donors.

This case study documents the successful transition of Beautiful Gate, a children's home in Cape Town, South Africa, from the orphanage model to a family-based and community-based approach. 

This article explores neighbour protective intervention (protective informal social control) in child neglect. It draws on narrative interviews with seventeen female parents from seven settlements in Ghana.

Join us on the April 13 from 11.00 a.m. - 12.30 p.m. Nairobi time to better understand how people with lived experiences of care systems can engage with different aspects of care reform. 

This case study focuses on kinship care in the Kenya context.

The purpose of this article is to provide information on the residential care facilities that operate in Ghana in terms of their licensing status, staffing, child safeguarding, and protection policies, as well as the safety and suitability of the premises. The article also describes the demographic profiles of the children who live in such facilities and provides an overview of the care they received and their well-being.

There is limited evidence on family reintegration for children who have been in residential care within the African context. The goal of this study is to find out what factors impact reintegrated institutionalized children’s desire to remain with their biological parents or extended family.

Social protection is increasingly being used in Eastern and Southern Africa to address economic and social vulnerability. Many governments in the region are also engaged in care reform to prevent family separation, support families to care for children well and provide quality alternative care. The same frontline workers are also often engaged in these two streams of work. This paper provides an outline of the key concepts and processes involved in social protection system strengthening and care reform and makes an argument for encouraging greater synergies between these two systems.

This is the first monthly update of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Learning Platform published in March 2022.