This study analyzed data from residential care settings in Victoria, Australia, to examine how missing episodes intersect with worker-identified concerns about sexual and criminal exploitation among children and young people. Findings suggest that going missing may signal ongoing, overlapping patterns of exploitation-related harm—rather than isolated vulnerability—highlighting the need to view these incidents as part of sustained exploitation trajectories.

This comprehensive child welfare resource provides U.S. state and national data on child maltreatment, foster care, kinship caregiving, permanency, and older youth in care. The data are essential to help policymakers understand how many children and youth come in contact with the child welfare system, and why.

This study examines the critical role of Social Auxiliary Workers (SAWs) in supporting and protecting children awaiting foster care placement within under-resourced, community-based settings in South Africa. It explores the services they provide, their collaboration with other actors, and the challenges they face, addressing a key research gap to inform stronger child protection policy and practice.

This study explored adapting the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) program in Zimbabwe to explicitly address both violence against children and violence against women by incorporating gender-transformative approaches and actively engaging fathers. Findings showed strong interest in the program, highlighting the need for relationship skill-building, economic support, and intentional father involvement to create safer, more resilient family environments.

The report is a meta-evaluation of Save the Children Finland’s Global Child Protection programme, implemented from 2022 to 2025 in four countries in Africa – Burkina Faso, Côte d´Ivoire, Somaliland and Zambia – spanning development, humanitarian and peace-building contexts.

Building on Spring Impact's previous ISPCAN Network webinar on the fundamentals of scaling impact, this session dives deeper into what it truly takes to scale child sexual abuse prevention-focused initiatives.

This guidance is intended to support colleagues who are already engaged in this area of work in strengthening the Community-Level Social Welfare Workforce (CLSWW) through a reflective, collaborative, and Child Protection Systems Strengthening (CPSS) approach. The guidance outlines a practical assessment and strategy development process in a step-by-step manner, enabling country offices —together with government counterparts and other child protection organizations—to identify strengths, gaps, and priorities, and to plan and implement targeted actions accordingly.

This global brief examines how sustained humanitarian funding cuts since early 2025 are affecting children’s safety, access to protection services, and the overall capacity of child protection systems across humanitarian contexts. Drawing on insights from 401 practitioners across 68 countries, alongside key informant interviews, the analysis shows that what began as short-term financial disruption has evolved into systemic deterioration.

Too often, child sexual abuse prevention is seen as too complex to scale – too sensitive, siloed, or difficult to measure. In the first study of its kind, Spring Impact reveals how 17 organisations are making scale work in the real-world: reaching more children, embedding prevention into public systems, and sustaining impact over time.

For the second session in CELCIS' Emerging Insight Series they explored what is known about how AI is already being used in decision-making in responding to the care and protection needs of children. The webinar showcased examples from across the world of where systems using AI have been built, the safeguards considered and put in place, how these have been working, and what can be learned from these international case studies, including from the United States of America, the UK and Canada.