Timely, reliable and disaggregated data are fundamental to safeguarding children’s rights. Robust evidence enables us to design effective policies, allocate resources strategically, and monitor progress towards national and global commitments.

This article examines how recent war in Iran has disrupted and reshaped the country’s child welfare system, forcing authorities to rethink long-standing institutional approaches to caring for orphaned and abandoned children. As violence threatened hospitals and orphanages, the state welfare system began rapidly placing infants and vulnerable children into private homes, including with foster families and single women, marking a significant shift toward more family-based care arrangements.

This article explores Ethiopia’s growing challenge of supporting children without parental care in the context of rapid population growth, poverty, and ongoing crises. Drawing on decades of practitioner experience, it emphasizes that family-based care is more effective and beneficial than institutionalization, which should be used only as a last resort.

This report documents the history and achievements of the Child Protection Area of Responsibility (CP AoR) from its origin in 2005 up to its consolidation with the integrated Protection Cluster at the end of 2025.

This randomized trial in Thailand evaluated a blended parenting programme combining in-person sessions and messaging support, finding no reduction in child maltreatment at one-month follow-up. Results suggest the need to refine programme design and target higher-risk families, as well as assess longer-term impacts to better understand effectiveness.

This scoping review examines why individuals and families in Western countries choose to foster or adopt children with disabilities, identifying motivations such as altruism, personal values, commitment to caregiving, and perceived family enrichment. The findings highlight opportunities to strengthen recruitment and support strategies by aligning messaging and services with these motivations to improve care stability and outcomes.

This study evaluates how NGOs in Geita, Tanzania support street children, finding that while basic needs like food, shelter, and healthcare are prioritized, education and psychosocial services are often overlooked. It highlights funding constraints and coordination gaps as key challenges, calling for standardized service packages and more sustainable, rights-based approaches to improve long-term outcomes.

This study explores how kinship lineage and inheritance norms in Ghana influence decisions about placing children in the care of maternal or paternal grandmothers. While traditionally significant, findings suggest these norms are weakening due to legal reforms, social change, and interethnic marriages, with limited influence on most contemporary kinship care arrangements.

This article explores the lived experiences of street-connected youth in African cities, highlighting the multiple socio-economic challenges they face alongside their resilience in navigating daily survival. Drawing on focus groups across three cities, it reconceptualizes resilience as a dynamic, context-driven process shaped by social, institutional, and environmental factors, with implications for policy and practice.

This webinar—hosted by the Transitioning Residential Care Working Group under the Transforming Children's Care Collaborative—brought together practitioners from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern and Southern Africa to explore how social norms shape efforts to transition away from residential care and how they can be effectively addressed.