This Literature Review was commissioned by Adoption England’s Regional Adoption Agency (RAA) Leaders’ Group to support practitioners in care planning for children. This summary document is for use by those directly involved in care planning, and also aims to potentially provide some support for those writing care plans and court reports for children needing permanency away from their family.

This study investigated social orphans through narratives of young people with experiences of growing up in institutional care in Latvia. The study uses the life histories of participants to explore the phenomenon of social orphans.

Adopting a qualitative approach, this study gave voice to seven adoption applicants in Romania who began the adoption journey with one or more children but did not complete the legal process. The goal of the researchers was to understand their experiences throughout the adoption process and disruption. The present study is part of a larger research project that focused on the resilience of the adoptive family in Romania.

The authors of this study aimed to gain insight into the perceived living environment in different residential youth care settings from the perspectives of 26 youth, 14 parents, and 35 professionals in the Netherlands.

A valuable resource for practitioners, researchers and educators, this book puts forward a powerful case to think more broadly and flexibly about transition planning with care-leavers, placing the voices of young people at its heart. This book grew out of qualitative research interviews held with a small and diverse sample of young adults who were in the process of transitioning from out-of-home care (foster care, kinship care, or residential care) in London, England.

This article addresses two issues: whether the inequalities faced by cared for children will persist in different stages of their lives and whether these inequalities are dependent on the specific out-of-home care setting, i.e. residential or foster care. The authors examine data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), covering a 50-year period.

At the end of 2019, an innovative approach was launched in social work with young people in out-of-home care in Riga. This approach included prevention, changes in the form and methods of social work, and planning for the transition period.

The purpose of this macro-level study is to examine the effects of social welfare benefits and services on the demand for child removals. The study is based on the panel data of Finnish municipalities and their social welfare indicators for the period 2010–2021.

The purpose of this quantitative study is to investigate the relationship between agency and well-being in a group of care leavers (N = 48) recruited from the alternative care services offered by the cities of Florence and Prato in Italy and involved in the Caring project.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in 24 Lithuanian schools and involved parents/caregivers and their children aged 12 to 17. The study aimed to collect and analyse self-reported data on left behind children's emotional and behavioural problems and compare children’s reports with those of parents/caregivers.