The CAFO Summit 2026 is a major annual gathering hosted by the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO), scheduled for September 23–25, 2026 at First Baptist Atlanta in Georgia, USA.

Kinship placements are associated with achieving permanency but “progress moves” into kinship settings may disrupt stable placements, which are also beneficial. This study used event history models to compare rates of permanency among children transitioning between kinship and non-kinship foster placements immediately after being taken into care in the United States.

This technical brief examines how the meaningful participation of children and young people with lived experience (PWLE) in alternative care can strengthen child protection systems, improve service quality, and influence policy reform. It presents international examples from Ireland, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Moldova, Kenya, Romania, Albania, and the United States, illustrating how children and care leavers contribute to individual case planning, service design, regulatory monitoring, advocacy, and national care reform.

This chapter compares kinship care policies and practices across five high-income countries—the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, and South Korea—examining how different welfare and governance systems support children placed with extended family. It highlights growing prioritization of kinship care over institutional care while emphasizing differences in state support, regulation, and reliance on informal family networks.

This policy statement updates a previous statement to reflect advances in our understanding of both prenatal and postnatal environmental influences on early brain development, including the effects of alcohol and substance exposures prior to birth and the effects of severe or chronic stress on child development secondary to neglect, physical and sexual abuse, family disruption, poverty, and racism.

Chapin Hall is conducting a mixed-methods, longitudinal evaluation of the Cash with Care pilot, a 12-month direct cash pilot implemented by Covenant House New York. This document summarizes baseline data from the pilot. These data points establish the starting point for understanding how direct cash assistance and care may shape participants’ trajectories over time.

Growing up and living with albinism in rural Nigeria was tough for Aisha*. She and her two siblings with the condition were shrouded in stigma and lived in constant fear of being mutilated or killed.

This article highlights the importance of kinship care and explains how placing children with relatives or fictive kin can reduce trauma, preserve family and community connections, and improve long‑term well‑being outcomes.

This article explores how out-of-home care systems across five countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States) approach cultural care for children, examining the organisational structures, leadership, and practices that support or hinder children’s connections to their culture, family, and community. Drawing on interviews with service providers, it highlights key drivers of effective practice and offers practical tools and insights for strengthening culturally responsive, system-wide approaches to safeguarding children’s identity and wellbeing.

This article reports on a new analysis by the Brookings Institution estimating that over 100,000 children—most of them U.S.