Date: April 28-30, 2026

Location: Kansas City, KS

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) affirms the importance of family, culture, and community in children’s lives and obligates governments to support families and protect children from discrimination, violence, and exploitation, yet many countries still lack policies that require a child-rights approach, prioritize best interests in decision-making, or prohibit corporal punishment. This article critically examines how effectively Australia, Canada, and the United States have implemented key CRC principles—particularly best interests and corporal punishment—by comparing their child protection policies, legislation, and practices to assess the Convention’s influence and its potential to drive broader system reform.

This article reports on the introduction of the Global Child Thrive Reauthorization Act of 2025, a bipartisan bill in the U.S. Congress designed to expand and deepen early childhood development efforts in some of the world’s poorest countries.

The Chapin Hall report evaluates the My First Place program, which provides intensive case management and fully subsidized housing to young people aging out of extended foster care in six California counties. Using data on 2,598 participants, the report finds that program completers were more likely to be employed, earned higher wages, and were more likely to enroll in and complete a semester of college compared with nonparticipants or those who did not complete the program.

The article describes how hundreds of children across the United States have been left behind — in foster care, with relatives, or neighbors — after their Venezuelan parents were deported, often under sweeping immigration enforcement measures.

The article reports that President Trump secured $25 million in federal funding to strengthen support for youth in foster care, particularly focusing on those aging out of the system who often face heightened risks of homelessness, unemployment, a

Building on a presentation invited for a Kilbrandon Children’s Research webinar on media representations of children and young people in the care and criminal justice system, this article discusses the legacies of Canadian ‘care’ practices premised on violent assimilation and erasure.

This article from BBC discusses how a number of individuals adopted as children into the United States are now at risk of deportation because their citizenship status was never formally secured.

The piece argues that while the U.S.

This Reuters article reports that the Trump administration is offering unaccompanied migrant children in U.S. custody a one-time stipend of US $2,500 to voluntarily return to their countries of origin.