This article provides an update on a series of projects that have highlighted the issue of institutionalization of children in Europe, arguing that babies and small children aged less than 3 years old, with or without disability, should not be placed in residential care without a parent or primary caregiver.

This document is a French language summary brochure of the Manual of Good Practice titled ‘Child Abandonment and its Prevention in Europe,’ specific to child abandonment in France.

This edition of Insights produced by UNICEF summarizes the findings and recommendations of studies on the impact and outreach of social protection systems in Albania, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine where high rates of child placement in formal care still persist. The research offers important insight into the weaknesses and challenges faced by social protection systems in the region, but also point to ways in which policy-makers might maximise the impact of social protection systems in order to ‘keep families together’.

This comprehensive manual provides an overview of child abandonment and its prevention in Europe, exploring the extent of child abandonment, possible reasons behind this phenomenon, the consequences of abandonment, and good practices in terms of prevention. For the purposes of the EU Daphne-funded project, child abandonment is defined in two ways, namely open and secret abandonment. Country specific in-depth reviews of child abandonment and its prevention are provided for 10 countries and results from an EU-wide survey analyzed.

The authors of this article carried out a follow-up study of 143 young adults leaving kinship care. They assessed the young adults’ transition to adulthood with interviews and questionnaires. A small part of the sample presented serious problems of social exclusion. Seventy percent had found employment or were in higher education. The youth had frequently suffered the loss of foster carers and lack of support.

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.

Published by UNICEF, the report At Home or in a Home, provides an overview of the major trends and concerns about children in formal care and institutions as well as adoption Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Event to launch two new reports on importance of deinstitutionalization for all persons

The first comparative study of young people who have been in state care as children and their post-compulsory education, was undertaken by a team of cross-national researchers.

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.