This report examines the social and economic trends and challenges affecting children in CEE/CIS and the Baltic States. Social orphanhood, maternal and infant mortality rates, deaths from accidents and injuries, infectious disease, and low public health expenditures are addressed.

Report presents and analyzes new research and data around children with disabilities in the region, the effects of institutional care, and the need for family support services.

Provides a brief overview of child welfare reforms implemented in the ECA Region and the collective effort to move away from over-emphasis on institutional care through the Changing Minds, Policies and Lives Project.

Provides an overview of social service provision in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and provides information on ways to move resources away from institutional care, and into community-based social services. Contains specific examples from Latvia, Iceland, Sweden, Romania and other transitioning countries.

Contains practical tools and policy guidance for family and child welfare policy makers and practitioners. Relevant topics include gatekeeping, redirecting resources into preventive and family based services, and standards of care.

A research study on the policies, finances and current state of care of vulnerable children in Tajikistan. Includes data on budgeting and expenditures around institutional care, as well as recommendations for the creation of short-term and long-term care alternatives.

This report is the result of a seminar held in Kazakhstan 2004. It focuses on social welfare sector reform, and includes topics such as expanding legislative agendas and financing frameworks, as well as gate keeping. Case studies of reform processes from Romania, Tajikistan and Serbia are discussed. Includes conference agenda.

This paper examines the negative impact of institutional care in central eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent States and the Baltics region. It promotes community-based care alternatives and provides statistics. It also includes a list of useful resources addressing orphaned and vulnerable children.

A paper describing a study that reviewed the role of institutional care in Albania, Armenia, Latvia, Lithuiania and Romania, where the World Bank worked to develop community based care social services and move away from large residential institutions that according to the paper have deleterious affects on the nations and on the people who live in them. Particularly, the study focuses on the use of residential institutions by children, people with disabilities and the frail and isolated elderly.

Save the Children’s research and analysis of residential care services and the need for alternative non-institutional approaches for children separated from their families. This book examines policy and practices from work in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern and Central Europe.