This handbook documents how 48 civil society organisations across nine European countries involve children meaningfully in violence prevention work. Produced by Eurochild and Terre des hommes as part of the EU-funded Daphne-CHILD programme, it presents a project-by-project overview of child participation practices, covering approaches such as co-design, peer education, child-led research, arts-based methods, advocacy, and digital tools.

This article highlights a major milestone in child protection reform in the Nisporeni district, where no children under the age of six are now living in residential care institutions. This achievement follows several years of coordinated efforts by UNICEF, the Moldovan government, and partners to deinstitutionalize young children and expand family-based and community care alternatives.

The Guardian article is a deeply personal account of an adoptee who reconnects with his birth parents decades after being forcibly separated from his mother at birth in 1970s Britain, a time when social stigma and institutional pressures led many unmarried women to relinquish their children.

This U.S. Department of State report outlines ongoing efforts related to the protection and welfare of Ukrainian children affected by the war, with a particular focus on intercountry adoption, trafficking risks, and child protection systems.

This study examines the long-term effects of early institutional care in Zurich, finding that infants exposed to severe psychosocial deprivation faced significantly higher mortality risk and lost an estimated 12 years of life compared to peers raised in the community. It highlights that lack of nurturing interaction in early childhood has lasting consequences into adulthood, underscoring the critical importance of responsive care for child health and survival.

This study estimated the reported prevalence of child sexual exploitation among adolescents in residential care facilities in a northern region of Spain and identified associated risk factors. Findings underscore the urgent need for targeted prevention and intervention strategies addressing child sexual exploitation among youth in residential care.

This UNICEF Bosnia and Herzegovina story follows the journey of foster care as a pathway to belonging for children who cannot live with their biological families, focusing on how stable, family-based care can transform a child’s sense of safety, identity, and future.

This article explores how out-of-home care systems across five countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States) approach cultural care for children, examining the organisational structures, leadership, and practices that support or hinder children’s connections to their culture, family, and community. Drawing on interviews with service providers, it highlights key drivers of effective practice and offers practical tools and insights for strengthening culturally responsive, system-wide approaches to safeguarding children’s identity and wellbeing.

This paper aims to navigate the complex terrain of refugee law with a child-centric approach, evaluating whether the UK adequately safeguards the rights of unaccompanied children. It concludes that whilst the UK’s domestic legislation is in compliance with its international obligations, its asylum procedures ultimately fail to adequately safeguard unaccompanied children and a framework recognising vulnerability (as opposed to chronological age) as the appropriate threshold and determinative factor for safeguarding would better support the rights of unaccompanied minors and age-disputed individuals.

This article argues that the UK child social care system is in crisis, with rising numbers of children in care and persistently poor outcomes despite substantial spending. It identifies austerity, reduced preventative services, and factors such as domestic violence, parental mental health, and substance misuse as key drivers, and calls for systemic reform focused on reducing child poverty, investing in early intervention, and adopting trauma-informed approaches.