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 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.

This article reports that the UK’s suspension of a key refugee family reunion pathway has left hundreds of children stranded and separated from their families, many in unsafe or unstable conditions.

This report warns reports that modern slavery in the UK has reached its highest recorded levels and is likely to continue rising, according to the country’s independent anti-slavery commissioner. The article highlights that referrals of potential victims have nearly doubled in recent years—surpassing 23,000 cases in 2025—driven not only by better detection but by growing global and domestic vulnerabilities such as poverty, conflict, and unsafe migration pathways.

This document includes statistics on looked after children for Scotland for 2024-25. It covers data on children who are looked after, young people in continuing care, and young people eligible for aftercare services.

This BBC article examines concerns about children with complex needs being placed in unregulated or small residential homes in the UK, often far from their families, due to shortages in appropriate care placements.

This Guardian investigation reports that at least 104 children in England have died over a six-year period in which living in temporary accommodation was identified as a contributing factor, raising urgent concerns about the safety of emergency housing for homeless families.

This Guardian article reports that a growing shortage of suitable accommodation for vulnerable children in England is forcing social workers to place children in illegal or unregulated settings as a “least worst option,” sometimes in hotels, carav