This paper explores the research evidence from England and France on the mental health of young people aging out of care and into adulthood.

This article, from the Children and Youth Services Review special issue on ‘Young People's Transitions from Care to Adulthood’ examines the school performance and psychosocial wellbeing of care leavers in Sweden.

Few local authorities had elaborated programmes or routines for care leaving. Many small municipalities had few young people in care, which made it difficult to organise elaborated programmes for care leaving. Manager’s expected a rapid and linear transition to adulthood. Little awareness of the yo-yo transition pattern common for other young people. Managers were worried that continued contact with social services would lead to young people being dependant on support. Only 6% of managers had any information of young people’s whereabouts, once they had left care.

This paper presents the historical background for the development of child care in the Nordic countries, it presents some basic figures on child care take and take up of leave schemes as well as figures on child poverty in the Nordic countries.

This paper uses comparisons of child benefit packages in the European Union and Central and Eastern European and Confederation of Independent States (CEE/CIS) countries derived using model family methods.

Parental leave and early childhood education and care have gained a high profile in child and family policy fields, and both have been the subject of substantial cross-national mapping, describing and comparing their main features across a range of countries. This article provides overviews on parental leave and early childhood services in affluent countries, and reflections on this mapping.

Child care and early education policies may not only raise average achievement but may also be of special benefit for less advantaged children, in particular if programs are high quality. We test whether high quality child care is equalizing using rich longitudinal data from two comparison countries, Denmark and the United States. 

This document stresses the importance of healthy attachments for children, especially looked after children. It provides an overview of attachment theory, presents the policy context of looked after children in Scotland, outlines the evidence on effective interventions for children in care and their families, and highlights findings and practice implications.

The main aim of this research is to enhance the understanding of why children in care in the UK are disproportionately likely to end up in the youth justice system or in custody.

The purpose of this paper is to provide background information and offer pragmatic steps in relation to priority no. 3 of the European Declaration on the Health of Children and Young People with Intellectual Disabilities and their Families: “To transfer care from institutions to the community”. The paper was produced in preparation for the conference in Bucharest, Romania 26-27 November, 2010.