This report presents the findings from a study that aimed to explore the application in practice of the ‘necessity principle’ from the Guidelines on Alternative Care for Children (UN, 2009) by using three quantitative and three qualitative indicators that provide information about whether children and families have received support to the fullest extent possible before a child ends up outside of parental care arrangements in formal or informal care, or living alone. 

Using household survey data collected between September 2011 and December 2012 from Moldova and Georgia, this paper measures and compares the multidimensional well-being of children with and without parents abroad.

This study emphasises different facets of peer exploitation awareness and experience identified in closed-type institutions, including a couple of abusive behaviours that have not been previously identified in long-term residential centres.

The aim of this guide is to enable advocates to access the legal and practical tools needed to secure an end to, and compensation for, violations of rights suffered while in institutional care. 

In this comment piece that accompanies Child-to-adult neurodevelopmental and mental health trajectories after early life deprivation: the young adult follow-up of the longitudinal English and Romanian Adoptees study, Frank C Verhulst discusses how that study "fills an important knowledge gap on the long-term mental health consequences of early severe childhood deprivation."

This study used data from the English and Romanian Adoptees study to assess whether deprivation-associated adverse neurodevelopmental and mental health outcomes persist into young adulthood.

This paper examines the deinstitutionalisation process in Bulgaria.

Three semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted with twelve schoolchildren, aged 13–15 years for the purpose of exploring the knowledge and attitudes towards disability of young people within Moldova.

In this issue of ODR, Maxim Tucker details the deinstitutionalization challenges facing Ukraine

USA TODAY reports Russia is willing to open up discussions with the United States regarding the possibility of lifting its four-year old adoption ban.