This research report reviews international approaches to competency frameworks and in-service training for the social service workforce, drawing on experiences from the United Kingdom, Romania, Germany, France, Sweden, Poland, and other countries.

This technical brief examines how the meaningful participation of children and young people with lived experience (PWLE) in alternative care can strengthen child protection systems, improve service quality, and influence policy reform. It presents international examples from Ireland, Scotland, the United Kingdom, Moldova, Kenya, Romania, Albania, and the United States, illustrating how children and care leavers contribute to individual case planning, service design, regulatory monitoring, advocacy, and national care reform.

This case study examines the supervision system for the social work workforce in the United Kingdom, highlighting governance arrangements, professional standards, implementation practices, and lessons relevant to strengthening supervision in Ukraine. The publication describes supervision as a legally mandated and reflective practice embedded within employer accountability systems and professional development, rather than solely a performance management mechanism.

This mixed-methods systematic review reports findings from 73 studies on interventions to support children and young people to return home safely after a period in care in the UK. Overall, reunification interventions had a small but meaningful positive effect on outcomes associated with successful reunification.

This chapter compares kinship care policies and practices across five high-income countries—the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Sweden, and South Korea—examining how different welfare and governance systems support children placed with extended family. It highlights growing prioritization of kinship care over institutional care while emphasizing differences in state support, regulation, and reliance on informal family networks.

This report, from the UK All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Kinship Care, shines a spotlight on the experiences of children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) who are raised by kinship carers. The report reveals that both the child welfare system and the SEND system were not designed with kinship families in mind.

This systematic scoping review examines programmes that integrate parenting support and financial well-being support for families with children aged 0–19 in the UK. It explores programme models, evaluation approaches, and evidence on their effectiveness in addressing child and family outcomes.

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 report examines how children’s services respond to domestic abuse and how factors such as poverty, gender, race, ethnicity and age influence both families’ experiences and professional decision-making. Researchers found significant gaps in the information collected and used by services and policymakers, alongside limited understanding of the social and economic contexts in which domestic abuse occurs.

Reunification can be a pivotal transition for children, young people, and their families. A return home is not a single event: it is a process that requires careful assessment, purposeful planning, shared decision-making, and sustained support before, during, and after a child returns home. This Practice Guide focuses on reunification.