This document includes the Minimum Standards on Alternative Care for Children set out by the Government of Cambodia, including both the Minimum Standards for Residential Care for Children and the Minimum Standards on Alternative Care for Children in the Community.

This Prakas is intended to define roles and responsibilities of relevant competent agencies and establish procedures, operational guides, and forms to implement the Policy on Alternative Care for Children.

This document presents the full policy on the alternative care of children in Cambodia.

This video describes the work of the Alternative Care Panel in Uganda, a panel composed of professionals who assess the stability of potential adoptive or foster parents to determine if the parents can provide for needy and vulnerable children, with the ultimate goal of keeping children out of institutional settings and in family-based care.

This post from the Faith to Action Initiative highlights the work of the Abide Family Center in Uganda, which helps to keep families together.

This 6-minute video from the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University explains the importance of human interaction with a caregiver to an infant’s brain development and the dangers of neglect to a child’s cognitive development, particularly the neglect that occurs in institutional settings.

This paper presents a policy position which argues that, “as the Greek authorities map out the road to long-term recovery, several key steps to reform the child protection and care system should be taken as a matter of priority.”

The Common European Guidelines on the Transition from Institutional to Community-based Care (‘the Guidelines’) provide practical advice about how to make a sustained transition from institutional care to family-based and community-based alternatives for individuals (including children) currently living in institutions and those living in the community, often without adequate support. 

This toolkit, originally published in September 2010 and updated in February 2015, serves as a resource for social workers in the US who are working with immigrant families within the child welfare system.

This Guide, written in Spanish, features a compilation of several social protection programs, services and public policies that resulted in the prevention of family breakdown and in the support of families and communities in caring and protecting their children.  All these examples are taken from the Latin American region, Italy and Romania.