The Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action were formulated in 2011-2012 by the Child Protection Working Group (CPWG), an inter-agency working group composed of child protection practitioners, academics, and policy makers working to support child protection work in humanitarian settings.

In 2011, SOS Children’s Villages International developed an assessment tool to measure a state’s implementation of the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children. This tool was used as a basis for conducting research by countries participating in the SOS Children’s Villages global advocacy campaign: Care for ME! Quality Care for Every Child. Country snapshots were produced for 7 countries. They include statistical data reporting the geographical prevalence of formal care institutions, number of children in these facilities, and more.

In her entry on the Huffington Post Blog, Daniela Papi writes about the discussions that took place at the  World Travel Mart Responsible Tourism Day related to child protection and orphanage tourism.

The purpose of the toolkit is to assist all public authorities in Europe involved in the programming and implementation of EU Structural Funds (and other relevant funds) to make decisions which will help to improve the lives of more than a million European citizens currently living in institutional care. The toolkit aims to explain how EU funds can support national, regional and local authorities in designing and implementing structural reforms to develop quality family-based and community-based alternatives. The toolkit explicitly deals with the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), but it aims to apply also to the programming and implementation of the European Agricultural and Rural Development Fund (EARDF) and the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA). 

This inter-agency paper was written by Family for Every Child, Better Care Network, Consortium for Street Children, Save the Children, SOS Children’s Villages, and World Vision, for submission to the United Nations consultation: ‘Health in the Post-2015 Development Agenda.’ It examines the links between child protection and health and argues for a continuing focus on health and child survival that encompasses particular goals and indicators on children’s protection.

This briefing note, produced by an Interagency Working Group on children without parental care, is designed to highlight the vulnerability of children to violence in the family and alternative care settings, and to encourage members of the CAT Committee to consider the potential added value of reference to the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.

In this TED video, Georgette Mulheir, CEO of Lumos, an NGO dedicated to ending worldwide systematic institutionalization, describes how orphanages can cause irreparable damage to children both mentally and physically and urges to end reliance on them by finding alternate ways of supporting children in need.

In this TED Talk, poet and playwright Lemn Sissay tells his story of growing up in foster care in the UK. 

This article reviews the available evidence regarding the efficacy, effectiveness, ethics, and sustainability of approaches to strengthen systems to care for and protect children living outside of family care in low- and middle-income countries.

This article reviews the U.S. Government Evidence Summit on Protecting Children Outside of Family Care held in December 2011 in Washington D.C. The Summit brought together more than 150 of the world’s leading advocates for children to examine the strength of the research evidence on existing programs and interventions, and most importantly to identify critical knowledge gaps and areas where more research is needed so that systems and programs designed to improve the overall health and well-being of these vulnerable children may be strengthened.