Once considered a last resort reserved for parents who abandon their children, the involuntary and permanent termination of parental rights now hangs over every mother and father accused of any form of abuse or neglect — including allegations of nonviolent behavior like drug use or truancy.

This study aimed to identify components essential to building a model of care for youth involved in sex trafficking in child welfare.

This research report, developed by the IPC-IG and the UNICEF MENA Regional Office for Middle East and North Africa, presents five case studies that demonstrate how integrated social protection and child protection systems enhance efficiency, especially of the social service workforce, and improve socio-economic and child outcomes: Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Egypt, and Brazil.

Join the Haiti Family Care Network for a discussion on current events and challenges to child/youth/family programming in Haiti. The conversation will be loosely moderated with the goal of sharing challenges and lessons learned and supporting one another. This conversation will take place in English.

PANAMA CITY, 5 December 2022 - Amidst growing migration flows, violence, and climate hazards, an estimated 16.5 million children in Latin America and the Caribbean will require humanitarian support in 2023, UNICEF alerted today at the launch of its Humanitarian Action for Children appeal.

There was a moment in Cara Courchene's life when reuniting with her children seemed out of reach.

There was a moment in Cara Courchene's life when reuniting with her children seemed out of reach. The child welfare system seems stacked against parents like her, but one Indigenous-led program has had remarkable success in trying to change that. In 98 per cent of cases, the Family Group Conference program either reunited children with families who love them, or prevented a child from entering the child welfare system in the first place.

Unless the treatment of a child makes headlines (for example, when a child dies), Americans rarely think about the agencies charged with child protection. So, the system that handles more than 3.5 million cases a year gets little public scrutiny, in part because the people most affected are poor.

Matthew Fletcher, a law professor at the University of Michigan, where he teaches and writes about federal Indian law and American Indian tribal law, discusses the Indian Child Welfare Act and the U.S. Supreme Court case that could weaken this law, and Native American sovereignty.

Linking adoption to abortion so casually, with no further elaboration, reveals a particular view of the world. The logic seems so clear: Lots of parents want to adopt babies, the babies who will no longer be aborted could be those babies. Two incredibly complex social issues, one easy almost-beautifully reductive solution. But of course, the reality isn’t so simple.

On 25 September 2022, a referendum was held in Cuba to approve the Family Code 2022. The historic new legislation, which is widely celebrated as one of the “most progressive codes of families”, provides important, strengthened measures for the protection of children and adolescents across the country.