Over the past year, the Leadership Dialogue Series, hosted by Miracle Foundation India and India Alternative Care Network (IACN), has brought together leaders from government, civil society, academia, youth, philanthropy, and the private sector to reflect on how systems can better strengthen families and prevent the unnecessary separation of children. As they conclude the 2025-26 series, the 10th edition of Leadership Dialogues will focus on a critical question: How do we know if family strengthening efforts are truly working?

This study reviews existing research on the challenges faced by orphans in Jammu and Kashmir, India, highlighting that while some children remain with extended family, others are placed in orphanages when relatives cannot provide care. The review finds that orphans in the region face multiple social, economic, psychological, and health challenges throughout their lives.

This session, during Dasra Philanthrophy Week, brings together thought leaders, policymakers, funders, and civil society actors to reflect on where children are being missed, why risks go unidentified, and how systems can be strengthened. Drawing from policy, practice, and lived realities, the conversation will explore how early identification and cross-sector coordination can enable stronger and more timely child protection responses.

This article notes how a pan-India study revealed that thousands of children of incarcerated parents (CoIP) are left invisible and vulnerable within India’s criminal justice system despite Supreme Court mandates intended to protect their rights and well-being.

In this webinar, speakers shared the principles, practices, and innovative initiatives in family strengthening across the East and North-Eastern regions of India. Speakers reflected on evolving family vulnerabilities, the role of family-based care in care reform, and what it truly takes to embed family-strengthening principles into everyday practice.

This study compares the role of advocacy coalitions in forming child protection policies in the United States and Indonesia, looking at the problems that arise from their different political and governance systems. The findings show how important it is to improve inter-agency collaboration, strengthen local governance, and get more political support to fix the problems with child protection services

This study examined differences in emotional and behavioural problems among 400 adolescent orphans in Kerala, India using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire to assess how sociodemographic factors shape mental health outcomes. The findings revealed significant variations by gender, religion, type of orphanhood, length and type of institutional care, underscoring the need for tailored psychosocial interventions that reflect these differences.

This chapter, in the book Children and Family Social Work, reviews the reform of children’s care systems in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, tracing the historical reliance on large-scale residential institutions under communism and the subsequent shift toward community-based alternatives after the Soviet Union’s collapse. While institutionalization has significantly declined and community services have expanded, challenges remain in funding, workforce development, and preventing family separation while protecting children from harm.

This UNICEF article examines how violent discipline, both physical and psychological, remains widespread across Europe and Central Asia, often occurring in homes or care settings behind closed doors despite legal bans and policy commitments in man

The article highlights a deeply troubling crisis facing street-connected children in Pakistan, who remain largely invisible to authorities and are subject to widespread sexual exploitation and abuse, exacerbated by poverty, lack of safe shelter, l