This webinar, the fifth in the Transforming Children's Care Webinar Series focused on a new study ('Impact of COVID-19 on Privately Run Residential Care Institutions: Insights and Implications for Advocacy and Awareness Raising'). The study, comprising 21 semi-structured interviews across seven focus countries, explores the effect of COVID-19 on a small number of privately run and funded residential care institutions.

The purpose of this evidence synthesis is to summarize what is already known about the impacts of the pandemic on children’s mental health risks, specifically in humanitarian settings with the aim of providing an overview of evidence to date. This synthesis captures the toll that COVID-19 and public health measures to reduce its transmission have taken on children’s mental health worldwide due to stressors from social isolation, family hardships, school closures, service interruptions, and economic crises. Evidence relevant to mental health and psychosocial support generally and in conflict-affected settings were included. Together, 52 academic articles and resources and 21 news articles from April 2020 to July 2021 were compiled for this report. 

Age plays a critical role in a child’s migration, but how will gender mediate that experience? Which gender-specific vulnerabilities, needs, and opportunities influence the lives of girls and boys on the move? This report reviews the existing evidence base – official statistics and quantitative and qualitative studies from the community level to the global level – to shed light on these important questions.

Because most COVID-19 deaths occur among adults, not children, attention has been focused, understandably, on adults. However, a tragic consequence of high numbers of adult deaths is that high numbers of children might lose their parents and caregivers to COVID-19, as occurred during the HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and 1918 influenza epidemics. The goal of this report is to shine a bright light on this urgent and overlooked consequence that is harmful for children.

This report presents statistical data from 192 countries on children experiencing COVID-19-associated orphanhood and death of grandparent caregivers, a description of the trends in these data, a real-time COVID-19 Calculator for Death of Parents and Caregivers, and strategies and principles for integrating care for children bereaved by the virus into every nation’s COVID-19 response planning.

This study used mortality and fertility data to model minimum estimates and rates of COVID-19-associated deaths of primary or secondary caregivers for children younger than 18 years in 21 countries.

This policy brief draws attention to Article 8 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) which notes that a child has a right to identity including a name, a nationality and family relations. Whenever a child is deprived of one of these elements, States have an obligation to restore the child’s identity speedily. At the heart of any intercountry adoption (ICA) is the modification of a child’s identity given at birth. The brief also includes recommendations for policymakers.

This overview considers the effect of the pandemic on street-connected children, meaning those who live or work on or have another strong connection to the street, and those who work with them. It draws on data gathered from members of the Consortium for Street Children’s network of over 180 community organisations, national and international non-governmental organisations, researchers, advocates and on-the-ground practitioners working in 135 countries.

he Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has issued, in collaboration with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), a practical guide on how to protect family unity and reunification more effectively in human mobility and mixed movement contexts during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This publication is part of a series of guides issued by the IACHR to address the impact of the pandemic on human rights. The guide makes recommendations to States, so they may protect family unity, prevent separation, and take any necessary measures to ensure the reunification of families who may have been separated in contexts associated with human mobility.

This report published by UNICEF’s Office of Research – Innocenti, ranks countries across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) based on their national childcare and parental leave policies.