This brief was developed from key informant interviews in the countries that participated in the care system assessment: Armenia, Guatemala, Kenya, and Uganda. The aim is to share learning with others interested in assessing a country’s care system, to think about if a care system assessment is right for them, and if so, how to do it.
This learning brief was developed as part of the CTWWC 2021 annual report and shares learning from demonstration countries on how to engage and bring faith actors into care reform.
This learning brief was developed as part of the CTWWC 2021 annual report and shares learning from two demonstration countries, Moldova and Guatemala. It showcases how care reform is led by government and how to influence different government actors.
This learning brief was developed as part of the CTWWC 2021 annual report and shares learning from several contexts and is intended to share learning on how family strengthening, reunification, case management and workforce strengthening can be integrated in care reform.
This learning brief was developed as part of the CTWWC 2021 annual report and shares learning from Kenya and Moldova. It is intended to share what the initiative has learned about gathering data and helping governments and their partners to use it for strategizing care reform.
This learning brief was developed as part of the CTWWC 2022 annual report and shares learning from across different contexts. It is intended to showcase how the transition of care services is happening and how it can be supported.
This learning brief was developed as part of the CTWWC 2022 annual report and shares learning from Kenya, Guatemala and Moldova. It is intended to help other practitioners understand how to bring meaningful participation of people with lived experience into care reform. By people with lived experience CTWWC considers children and youth, care leavers, parents and other care givers who are experiencing the care system in their context.
This learning brief was developed as part of the CTWWC 2022 annual report and shares learning from Kenya and beyond. It is intended to help other practitioners understand how disability inclusion happens by sharing examples of practice.
This learning brief was developed as part of Changing the Way We Care's 2022 annual report and shares learning on family-based alternative care from Guatemala, Moldova, India and Kenya and links the reader to additional CTWWC resources on the topic.
In this video, Changing the Way We Care (CTWWC) speaks to Catholic audiences in the U.S. and around the world who have supported children in residential care facilities – sometimes referred to as “orphanages” - about the importance of supporting children to stay with their families or be reintegrated from residential care into family care.
La nouvelle boîte à outils d'évaluation participative de Family for Every Child place les connaissances et l'expérience des organisations de la société civile (OSC) locales en son centre. Elle offre une alternative aux dynamiques d'évaluation traditionnelles, en s'appuyant sur la force des solutions locales.
El nuevo conjunto de herramientas de evaluación participativa de Family for Every Child pone en el centro el conocimiento y la experiencia de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil (OSC) locales. Ofrece una alternativa a las dinámicas de evaluación tradicionales, aprovechando la fuerza de las soluciones locales.
Family for Every Child's new Participatory Evaluation Toolkit places the knowledge and experience of local Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) at its centre. It offers an alternative to traditional evaluation dynamics, by drawing on the strength of local solutions.
During this webinar, participants explored the theological dimensions of child-family separation. Is there a theology of the child within the Christian faith? How has the care and protection of children been understood within Catholic social teaching?
This UNICEF ESARO webinar examines the impacts of climate change on children's care and explains how care reform strategies and programmes need to adapt to address these new realities. The webinar explored how climate change affects communities in Eastern and Southern Africa.
UNICEF's DIPAS is a roadmap for greater cross-sectoral coordination for disability inclusion to be mainstreamed across the organization at every level to meet the needs of the world’s 240 million children with disabilities.
This web annex forms part of the WHO guidelines on parenting interventions to prevent maltreatment and enhance parent–child relationships with children aged 0–17 years. As such, it should only ever be read in conjunction with the main guideline document that sets out in detail how the methodology in the WHO handbook for guideline development was applied here, along with the development process and the recommendations themselves.
These WHO guidelines provides evidence-based recommendations on parenting interventions for parents and caregivers of children aged 0–17 years that are designed to reduce child maltreatment and harsh parenting, enhance the parent–child relationship, and prevent poor mental health among parents and emotional and behavioural problems among children.
This webinar was hosted by the Evidence for Impact Working Group of the Transforming Children’s Care Collaborative on March 30, 2023, and examined the Early Institutionalization Intervention Impact Project in Brazil.
In this report the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine outlines the main findings since the outset of its mandate. The body of evidence collected shows that Russian authorities have committed a wide range of violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law in many regions of Ukraine and in the Russian Federation.
Принудительное перемещение, депортация и усыновление детей из Украины, призводящее к окончательному разлучению детей с их семьями, сообществами и культурой, является явным нарушением их прав человека и международного гуманитарного права и представляет существенную угрозу их безопасности и б
In this joint statement, the co-signatories call on international, European Union and national authorities, to prevent and respond to child protection risks that threaten the well-being of children within and those fleeing Ukraine.
This Communication takes stock of the Temporary Protection Directive implemented on 4 March 2022 over the course of one year. It provides insight into how the EU managed to enable and coordinate a response to the largest displacement on European soil since the Second World War.
Примусове переміщення, депортація та усиновлення дітей з України, що призвело до остаточного розлучення дітей із їхніми сім’ями, громадами та культурою, є явним поруше
This Human Rights Watch report documents risks to children from institutions in areas directly affected by the conflict as well as those evacuated to other areas of Ukraine or to European countries.
This interagency document is open to endorsement by organizations, networks and agencies and we hope that you will consider adding your name to it and use it in your work and advocacy on behalf of children’s rights in Ukraine.
The purpose of this study, based in France, is to explore the Emotion Regulation Strategies (ERS) of children in foster care and to highlight those most commonly employed in family or placement contexts.
Authored by the ODI in partnership with UNICEF, this paper assesses the benefits of inclusive social protection from a displacement and child-centred perspective.
This webinar gives a comprehensive overview of the World Bank’s Human Development Flagship report, Collapse & Recovery: How COVID-19 Eroded Human Capital and What to Do About It, which reviews global data showing that the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed human capital at critical moments in the life cycle, scarring millions of children and young people in low- and middle-income countries.
This World Bank report provides a first comprehensive review of global data for young people who were under the age of 25 during the pandemic. It shows that the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted human capital accumulation at critical moments in the life cycle, derailing development for millions of children and young people in low- and middle-income countries.
At its resumed eleventh emergency special session, the world body adopted a new resolution calling for an end to the war, only hours before the conflict enters its second year on Friday, 24 February 2023.
This report published by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL) documents the relocation by Russia of at least 6,000 children from Ukraine to a network of re-education and adoption facilities in Russia-occupied Crimea and mainland Russia.
This learning event was an opportunity for care reform advocates and practitioners to learn more about social protection – as well as economic strengthening interventions - from researchers and practitioners in the field.
This guideline provides evidence-based recommendations on parenting interventions for parents and caregivers of children aged 0–17 years that are designed to reduce child maltreatment and harsh parenting, enhance the parent–child relationship, and prevent poor mental health among parents and emotional and behavioural problems among children.
This report highlights the recommendations and priorities that EU decision-makers and national governments can do to support the most vulnerable children and prevent widening inequalities.
This article examines how language, liminality, and social marginalization converge in the institutional lives of two displaced children in Angola. A displaced child is very likely to be placed into institutionalized care, which in Angola exists in the form of centros de acolhimento, residential centers that house minors affected by orphanhood, poverty, displacement, or abandonment. Drawing on one year of ethnographic research in two residential centers, the article argues that despite being sites of care and protection, some children come to desire living on the street as a byproduct of persistent marginalization and forms of liminality in the institutions.
This paper is a systematic review of studies that examined the implementation and/or effectiveness of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). ICWA was enacted in 1978 in response to the disproportionate number of American Indian children in non-American Indian out-of-home placements and to enhance the stability of American Indian families and tribes.
The authors review data about LGBTQIA+ youth in care and describe two European programs that are striving to provide a secure, welcoming, and affirming living environment for LGBTQIA+ youth in child welfare systems.
In this paper, the authors report on a qualitative study conducted in Australia exploring practitioners' perceptions of barriers to contact between children in out-of-home care and their birth parents.
The aim of this article is to analyse the factors that intervene in decision-making by childcare professionals regarding non-kin foster care in the north-east of Spain.
This study aimed to explore the risks facing orphans and vulnerable children in a children’s home in a township setting during COVID-19 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
This global study examined 106,979 tweets posted by 34,370 unique users from 2010 to 2019 to understand the sentiment of those indirectly involved in orphanage tourism and its change over time.
This study examines international adoptions by French people in more than twenty countries from 1979 to 2021. Researchers analyzed thousands of diplomatic files from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the subject and found reports of various illicit practices in the process of adopting children.
This case study examines the transition of Patrick from residential care to being supported to live independently through a programme of supervised independent living for young people. This programme aims to ease the transition from residential care to living independently in the community and is part of the broader Tubarerere Mu Muryango Programme (Let’s Raise Children in Family) care reform programme in Rwanda.
This case study details the experience of Attim, a 54-year-old grandmother from Eastern Uganda who provides care for her grandchildren after they left residential care. Social workers in Uganda often find that placement with extended family members is the most appropriate option for children leaving residential care.
This case study tracks the impact of family support services to a Ugandan mother and her family during the COVID-19 pandemic in an effort to prevent family separation.
This case study documents the story of David's reintegration from a residential care home for children with disabilities in Rwanda to kinship care with his grandparents.
This case study documents the story of Mary, one of thousands of children in Kenya who were sent to family care suddenly without any preparation when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Mary's story highlights the need for family assistance to see a reunification through to successful reintegration.
This UNICEF ESARO webinar discussed strategies for building strong families and communities and preventing child-family separation in the region.
This is the monthly update of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Learning Platform published in January 2023.
This is the monthly update of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Learning Platform published in December 2022.
This Lumos working paper examines the relationship between education and institutional care and the fact that many children – especially those who are most vulnerable – can only access education in residential settings, settings which share similar harmful characteristics with institutional care settings.
This research report, developed by the IPC-IG and the UNICEF MENA Regional Office for Middle East and North Africa, presents five case studies that demonstrate how integrated social protection and child protection systems enhance efficiency, especially of the social service workforce, and improve socio-economic and child outcomes: Tunisia, Morocco, Iraq, Egypt, and Brazil.
This UK-based study aimed to develop an explanatory theory and model of the processes involved in fostering looked after children and the relationship between the roles of parent and professional.
This study was designed to be a small insights-based qualitative learning and reflection study to explore catalysts for transition. It was based on interviews conducted with Charitable Children’s Institutions’ (CCI) directors that sought to identify and explore the range of factors that influenced each director’s decision to transition their residential care services, and the interplay between those factors.
This Family for Every Child podcast episode explores the context for children and young people with care experience in New Zealand.
This is the UK government's implementation plan in response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care - an independent review of the UK's care system in order to build recommendations for how the system can be improved and to continue feeding in a wide range of views - published in May 2022.
This report presents the findings from a mixed-methods evaluation of peer parental advocacy (PPA) in the London Borough of Camden.
In their Stage 1 Report published on 19 December, the Scottish Parliament's Education, Children and Young People Committee warned that plans to integrate children's services into the National Care Service lack vital information; it is not currently possible to have a clear view on whether children’s services should be included under a National Care Service; and urged the government to provide more details on the financial implications.
This documentary chronicles a Honduran family’s struggle to reunite after being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border three years earlier under the Trump administration’s immigration policies.
This UK Department for Education report charts the experiences and views of parents in the UK whose children were made subject to a supervision order or a care order at home at the end of care proceedings.
This paper studies the emotional and behavioural difficulties and the personal wellbeing of adolescents under protective measures in Spain.
This study aimed to identify components essential to building a model of care for youth involved in sex trafficking in child welfare.
This study aims to provide evidence and instruction to social work educators, policymakers and practitioners
in Australia’s child protection, wellbeing, and justice systems about why and how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander controlled organizations are best placed to lead out-of-home care service delivery for Indigenous children, their family and community.
This article in the World Academy of Science Journal reviews some of the latest global studies on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children in residential care and children living with their families.
In this U.S.-based study, over 200 pre-adolescent children recently placed into out-of-home care were asked about the difficulty and helpfulness of placement and how their lives might be different had they not been removed. The same participants were interviewed 10 years later.
Four Family for Every Child member organisations share their experiences and perspectives on supporting the mental health of vulnerable children, building on discussions from their last event:
This Family for Every Child webinar focuses on the use of creative therapies in supporting the mental health of vulnerable children and youth.
This video by the Alliance for for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action details
This video by the Alliance for for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action details the main reasons for investing in child protection prevention programming in humanitarian crises.
This video by the Alliance for for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action details the three levels of prevention in child protection in humanitarian action.
This chapter in the book, "Psychological Perspectives on Understanding and Addressing Violence Against Children: Towards Building Cultures of Peace", explores how violence impacts children in various types of alternative care from larger scale institutions such as orphanages to family-based care models like foster care. The book explores the topic from a global perspective.
This article reviews the key reform processes in the domain of social protection in the the Republic of North Macedonia, with a focus on social services for children without parents and parental care.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has published a new report following a request by the Human Rights Council on Support systems to ensure community inclusion of persons with disabilities, including as a means of building forward better after the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
Strengthening family-based care is a key policy response to the more than 15 million orphaned and separated children who have lost 1 or both parents in sub-Saharan Africa. This analysis estimated the cost-effectiveness of family-based care environments for preventing HIV and death in this population.
El objetivo fundamental del presente libro es el análisis comparativo de las políticas, prácticas e investigaciones en relación a los sistemas de protección infantil en diversos países de América Latina y Europa. Las distintas experiencias recogidas en el texto esperamos contribuyan a aportar a la escasa literatura existente sobre el tema en Iberoamérica, pese a su enorme relevancia para los distintos intervinientes, investigadores, comunidad profesional y tomadores de decisiones.
Esta nota de orientación tiene como objetivo ayudar a los implementadores de programas, coordinadores y otros actores humanitarios a abordar el suicidio y las autolesiones en entornos humanitarios. Reúne una amplia gama de enfoques, herramientas, materiales de referencia y ejemplos de casos. Es un recurso práctico y conciso aplicable a todo tipo de emergencias, organizaciones y sectores.
This guidance note aims to support programme implementers, coordinators, and other humanitarian actors in addressing suicide and self-harm in humanitarian settings.
With a focus on 2022-23 themes of transition of care services, development of family-based alternative care, participation of people with lived experience and disability inclusion, this report details several of the significant outcomes and program activities achieved by the work of the CTWWC Maestral team over the last year.
This is a recording of a UNICEF webinar presenting the launch of a global database of children in residential care on December 14, 2022.
Related content:
This Hope and Homes for Children publication provides critical lessons learned, practical evidence and recommendations to support global, regional and national decision makers to build political will, strategies, policies, and target funding to transform care systems.
El objetivo fundamental del presente libro es el análisis comparativo de las políticas, prácticas e investigaciones en relación a los sistemas de protección infantil en diversos países de América Latina y Europa. Las distintas experiencias recogidas en el texto esperamos contribuyan a aportar a la escasa literatura existente sobre el tema en Iberoamérica, pese a su enorme relevancia para los distintos intervinientes, investigadores, comunidad profesional y tomadores de decisiones.
This analysis estimated the cost-effectiveness of family-based care environments for preventing HIV and death among orphaned and separated children in sub-Saharan Africa.
This article discusses the evolution of adoption policy and practices in Guatemala from the 1990s to 2021.
Ezt az útmutatót azoknak a szolgáltatóknak állítottuk össze, akik gyermekekkel, családokkal és elszakított gyermekekkel foglalkoznak, válaszul a jelenlegi ukrajnai és környező országok humanitárius helyzetére.
In any transition process, different levels of risk and challenges can impact the children in care and therefore need to be managed.
This report captures the key insights, trends, learnings, and participant inputs from the Transitioning Residential Care Services Learning Event held in October 2022 which was organized and hosted by the Transitioning Residential Care Working Group as part of the Transforming Children’s Care Global Collaborative Platform.
This is Human Rights Watch's submission to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child's 94th pre-session to highlight areas of concern regarding the government of Russia’s compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).
El Comité destaca en particular la gravedad de la discriminación y la violencia de género contra las mujeres y las niñas Indígenas con discapacidad que viven en instituciones.
Le Comité insiste, en particulier, sur la gravité des actes de discrimination et de violence fondée sur le genre commis à l’encontre des femmes et des filles autochtones handicapées placées en institution.
The Committee highlights, in particular, the gravity of discrimination and gender-based violence against Indigenous women and girls with disabilities who are living in institutions.
The Institute on Statelessness and Inclusion (ISI), Child Identity Protection (CHIP) and supporting organizations convened a symposium focusing on “The Child’s Right to Identity in Emergency Settings”. The symposium delved deeper into the challenges of protecting and preserving identity rights, including nationality rights, for children on the move and children affected by armed conflict. It examined how children’s identity rights are undermined in emergency settings, the increased risk of statelessness and the need for urgent action on repatriation, reintegration and reunification of children affected by armed conflict.
Autistic children's experiences of COVID-19 have been largely absent from current crisis and recovery discourse. This is the first published study to directly and specifically involve autistic children both as research advisors and as research participants in a rights-based participatory study relating to the pandemic.
This Human Rights Watch report examines removals of children and termination of parental rights by state child welfare systems in the U.S., focusing primarily on four states: California, New York, Oklahoma, and West Virginia.
Organised jointly by ENIL-ECCL and Disability Rights Defenders, this webinar on November 22, 2022, featured speakers from Sweden, Slovenia and Scotland on the UN Guidelines on Deinstitutionalisation, including in Emergencies.
The aim of the study is to present the historical changes in child protection in Hungary and the process of deinstitutionalisation.
Using national child welfare data, the authors examined a subset of foster children (7%) who entered care due to parental incarceration in the U.S.
This study explores young people’s perceptions of their existential well-being during the transition after leaving care. The study involves peer research with young people leaving care in Finland and England.
The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine sibling relationships and sibling separation amongst adults with prior foster care experience in England.
