This phenomenological study explores the lived experiences of five houseparents in a residential care facility in Bukidnon, Philippines, highlighting their critical role in providing emotional support and stability while navigating significant emotional labor and institutional challenges. The findings reveal themes of adaptation, caregiving rewards, coping strategies, and personal transformation, underscoring the need for stronger institutional support, training, and culturally responsive interventions to improve both caregiver well-being and quality of care for children.

This article examines how, years after the Covid-19 crisis, many children in India who lost one or both parents continue to struggle due to gaps in government support systems.

This article examines South Korea’s decades-long international adoption system as a major human rights scandal, arguing that the country’s past role as a leading “baby exporter” was driven by state policy rather than purely humanitarian motives. It explains how, from the post-Korean War era onward, the government promoted overseas adoption as a cost-saving alternative to building domestic social welfare systems, enabling widespread abuses such as falsified records, coerced or fabricated parental consent, and the misclassification of children as orphans.

This study finds that young people in China experience leaving state care as a gradual, emotionally and materially complex transition shaped by readiness, relationships, and access to housing and income, while staff tend to frame it as a fixed administrative cutoff with limited follow-up support. It highlights systemic gaps—such as fragmented responsibilities, hukou-related transitions, and abrupt loss of support—and calls for more gradual, coordinated, and well-supported pathways to independence.

The article reports that the ongoing US-Israeli war in the Middle East is having a severe and long-lasting impact on children across the region, with hundreds killed and thousands injured and over a million displaced, particularly in Lebanon, Gaza

This paper examines how broader economic and labour market forces influence family separation and the placement of children in residential care in Cambodia, amid ongoing child care deinstitutionalisation reforms. While global evidence highlights the harm caused by residential care and promotes family and community-based alternatives, Cambodia’s reform efforts remain largely reactive and institution-focused, paying limited attention to structural drivers of family separation.

Children in Europe and Central Asia who are at risk of, in, or transitioning from alternative care face significantly higher rates of mental health challenges, which can contribute to family separation, placement instability, and poor reintegration outcomes. This paper highlights the urgent need to integrate mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) across the continuum of care and provides practical, evidence-based guidance for governments and practitioners to embed mental health promotion, prevention, and care into child protection systems.

This study assessed the physical health status of children residing in orphanage homes in Lucknow district, India. It found while most had normal nutritional status, many faced challenges, including high school dropout rates, signs of micronutrient deficiencies, and poor oral hygiene.

This Guardian article examines Japan’s landmark legal reform allowing divorced parents to negotiate joint custody for the first time, ending a decades-long system that granted sole custody typically to mothers and often cut off the other parent from a child’s life.

This review examines 43 documents on leaving care in Asia, highlighting limited research and significant gaps in policies and practices supporting care leavers. It finds that while some aftercare support exists, insufficient attention is given to young people’s physical and mental health, underscoring the need for stronger, context-specific policies and research in the region.