This book offers a comparative analysis of child and youth welfare systems across eight European countries, highlighting how diverse legal, historical, and institutional contexts shape responses to young people with complex support needs. Through contributions from researchers and practitioners, it reveals shared tensions—such as care versus control and participation versus coercion—while providing a multi-perspective foundation for transnational learning and policy reflection.

This report from the Coram Institute for Children marks the 50th anniversary of Coram Voice and highlights the Bright Spots programme, which captures the perspectives of children and young people in care and care leavers to inform local and national policy. Drawing on 27,000 responses collected between 2015 and 2024, the study focuses on what matters most to children and young people in their lives, emphasizing their voices rather than care system outcomes or reasons for entering care.

Ten kinship carers and a research team from the charity Kinship and Lancaster University coproduced this toolkit in three fun and creative workshops.

This report examines opportunities and challenges in co-producing research on kinship care, highlighting the need to involve carers as equal partners rather than treating them solely as research subjects. Drawing on a study conducted between 2022 and 2025 and accompanied by a practical toolkit, it emphasizes inclusive approaches that leverage kinship carers’ lived experiences to produce research relevant to policy and practice across all types of kinship care.

This qualitative study examines the lived experiences, motivations, and expectations of foster parents in Albania as the country transitions from institutional to family-based care, drawing on in-depth interviews with all active foster families at the time of the research. Findings reveal that fostering is driven by faith and compassion but shaped by limited state support, social stigma, and increasing awareness of children’s trauma, offering rare insight into how institutional and social contexts affect the sustainability of foster care in Albania.

War negatively affects adults’ mental and physical health, which in turn impacts their parenting, exposing children to both direct and indirect stressors. This book examines these consequences, using evidence-based research and case studies from the Russian-Ukrainian war to highlight the importance of attachment, trauma-informed support, and interventions for families during and after conflict.

Governments across Europe and Central Asia have advanced child care reforms, yet many children—especially those with disabilities or from marginalized communities—still face risks of separation without strong statutory family support systems in place. This White Paper outlines the essential policies, services, workforce standards, and rights-based approaches countries need to prevent unnecessary separation, strengthen families, and ensure every child can grow up safely in a supportive family environment.

Cambiar la Forma en que Cuidamos (CTWWC, por sus siglas en inglés) es una iniciativa global que promueve un cuidado familiar seguro y afectuoso para los niños.

The BBC investigation reveals that more than 1,000 adopted children in the UK have returned to care in the past five years, exposing a hidden crisis in which adoptive parents struggling to support traumatised children face blame, threats, and inad

This paper analyzes child rights in conflict, with a particular focus on the ongoing war in Ukraine, where children face heightened vulnerabilities to trafficking and exploitation. It identifies the key impacts of contemporary conflicts on children and the role of social workers in these contexts.