This article tells the story of Maha al-Rubaie, a 56-year-old woman in Gaza who has become the guardian of her infant great-nephew, Hamza, after his entire immediate family was killed in Israeli strikes. Maha had previously raised Hamza’s father, and now she faces the immense challenge of caring for a child born amid war, surviving with oxygen deprivation, seizures, and limited medical care.

This study explores the challenges faced by at-risk Arab young adults in Israel as they transition out of care, highlighting how minority status and cultural context shape their experiences. Findings reveal cycles of family risk, identity struggles, and feelings of loss and exclusion, underscoring the need for culturally responsive, gender-sensitive, and inclusive support programs for care leavers.

This study examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected child protection services in Saudi Arabia, finding increased risks and severity of violence against children alongside challenges such as limited reporting improvements, weak coordination, and insufficient staff training and digital tools. It highlights the need for stronger emergency preparedness, better collaboration across sectors, and improved resources to ensure effective child protection during future crises.

This article highlights how children are disproportionately impacted by the recent escalation of violence in Lebanon, reporting that in just a 24-hour period at least seven children were killed and dozens injured amid intensifying hostilities.

This study explores the daily functioning and lived experiences of Israeli female care leavers, highlighting how early life environments, transitions to adulthood, and individual routines shape their participation in everyday life. Findings emphasize the importance of functional skills, supportive routines, and resilience factors, pointing to the need for tailored interventions that address cognitive, behavioral, and health-related challenges.

This study examines how children with unknown parentage are cared for in modern society and the societal risks they face, using analysis of existing research. It finds that factors such as religious beliefs, economic conditions, and post-birth abandonment—along with stigma and discrimination—significantly shape these children’s experiences, and calls for stronger reforms and increased investment in child welfare programs.

This policy paper examines Egypt’s protection framework for unaccompanied and separated migrant children, highlighting both significant recent advances, such as national SOPs, a new asylum law, and expanded residence permits, and persistent challenges related to legal visibility, registration delays, and service access. It proposes actionable reforms to strengthen legal, administrative, and service systems, including expanding family-based alternative care to migrant and refugee children, developing child-friendly asylum procedures, and better integrating NGO, refugee-led, and community-based support into state structures.

This study explores the experiences of young Syrian migrant women transitioning out of institutional care in Türkiye, revealing how gender, migration status, and structural barriers shape their pathways to adulthood. It finds that gaps in education, employment support, housing, social capital, and aftercare services create persistent instability and exclusion, underscoring the need for more inclusive, gender-sensitive aftercare policies.

The piece reveals how children born to unmarried mothers in Saudi Arabia are routinely denied legal status, proper birth registration, healthcare and education because their existence challenges strict societal and legal norms.

On October 23, 2025, the Transforming Children’s Care Collaborative hosted a webinar exploring Kafaalah—a long-standing childcare practice in Muslim communities that has been observed for more than 1,400 years.