In this paper, the authors describe a proposed programme of evaluation to examine the impact of a new approach to the welfare of children in England on the time they are in contact with services.

In this cross-sectional comparative study, the authors assess the outcomes of emancipated youth in the U.S. after the initiation of an extended after care program and compare the results with the outcomes drawn from a prior study conducted twenty years earlier. Overall, young adults in the 2021 study fared significantly better than their 2001 counterparts.

This article explores the concept of solidaridad, considers its enduring currency in kinship discourse in Spain, and analyzes various case studies from the authors' respective research projects.

This article examines the practice of customary child fostering in Nigeria and the state of parental rights in such a situation. The significance of the practice and its impact in mostly Nigerian traditional communities raises the question of its regulation in order to safeguard children's rights as well as parental rights.

This article employs concepts from family sociology to explore how ‘family’ is conceptualised in 14 life narratives of young people in foster care in Spain.

This study represents a scoping review and narrative synthesis that sought to identify indicators used to measure the success of aging out youth in North America and their corresponding methods of assessment.

This chapter in the book "Separated Migrant Young Women in State Care" explores how state care systems respond to separated young migrants, using examples from across the globe.

This chapter in the book "Engaging Fathers in Child Welfare and Foster Care Settings: Promoting Paternal Contributions to the Safety, Permanency, and Well-being of Children and Families" explores research on father engagement in child welfare services in the U.S., including studies on engagement activities, associations with child welfare outcomes, and barriers to engagement with the aim of assisting social workers and child welfare caseworkers in more fully engaging fathers.

This volume covers a broad spectrum of current research findings concerning the participation of young people in foster families and residential living groups in Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland as well as cross-nationals perspective on children and young people’s participation in foster and residential care placements in Great Britain and France.

This report presents the findings of an online survey and individual interviews which explored the experiences of carers providing out-of-home care to infants in New South Wales. While there is increasing research related to the care of children and young people requiring out-of-home Care, there is comparatively less specifically related to the care of infants. The findings highlight a need to provide increased training, support, and resources for new carers of infants in out-of-home care.

This study aimed at investigating the psychosocial wellbeing of orphaned children in selected primary schools in Tanzania. 

The goal of this global study was to first identify the global prevalence of child abuse by country or region and second to identify the factors that influenced child abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This analysis conducted by the UK Office for National Statistics explores the education and social care background of care-experienced young people in England who were imprisoned at any point up to the age of 24 years. 

Children in care are 10 times more likely to end up in prison by the time they reach 24 than those who grew up outside the system, official figures suggest. The study by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published today found that looked-after children were more at risk of coming into contact with the criminal justice system during early adulthood than their peers.

This is an interview with Dragana Ciric Milovanovic, director of European Programs for Disability Rights International (DRI), during the European Launch of the Deinstitutionalization Guidelines, including in emergencies.

The government of Rwanda is in the final phases of its care reform program. Having reintegrated the majority of children from residential care back to families and communities, they are now working on the reintegration of children with disabilities. In this webinar, we hear from policymakers and practitioners on how this has been done and key lessons learned.

This World Health Organization report, "What works to prevent online violence against children", presents ways to address the growing worldwide concern of keeping children safe online, with a specific focus on two forms of online violence: child sexual abuse including grooming and sexual image abuse; and cyber aggression and harassment in the form of cyberbullying, cyberstalking, hacking and identity theft. The report recommends implementing school-based educational programmes that have multiple sessions, promote interaction among youth and engage parents.

In this U.S.-based study, the authors found that increasing the affordability of fostering a child could increase foster care capacity. They examine the impacts of changing economic conditions on the number of children in foster care.

This report is a culmination of 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. The work and outcomes of the review were guided by the views of people that have lived experience of the children’s social care system in the UK.

This is the third report by Coram Voice and The Rees Centre at University of Oxford exploring learning from the Your Life, Your Care surveys that are part of the Bright Spots Programme. It is an analysis of 9,472 responses from children and young people (aged 4-18 years) collected between 2016 and 2021 from 38 Local Authorities in England. The findings build on previous overview reports and the pilot stage in 2015 that involved 611 children and young people. By 2021, the research team had gathered over 10,000 voices from children in care in England.

These are the key findings and recommendations of a report produced by Coram Voice and The Rees Centre at University of Oxford that captures the views of 10,000 children and young people in care in the UK on their wellbeing. This report summarises responses collected through the largest survey of its kind from children and young people aged 4-18 years between 2016 and 2021, giving unprecedented insight into children in care’s subjective wellbeing.

This snapshot produced by Mixed Migration Center examines environmental drivers of international mobility and their interactions with other migration drivers in East and the Horn of Africa. The aim is to provide national and regional policy actors with some empirical data on the links between climate change and international mobility, to inform discussions on future activities and policy directions.

Olena Merzliakova, a psychologist and Ph.D. in Psychology, shared effective and simple tips for parents. She is one of the experts engaged for the EU-funded hotline established this summer by the UNDP.

This is the monthly update of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Learning Platform published in November 2022. 

This document is a summary of key findings and points of discussion that were highlighted by presenters and participants during the Addressing the need for foster care in the context of the Ukraine crisis learning event that took place on 7 September 2022.

This case study outlines the financial impact of the transition of Bridges Safehouse, an organization that provided support to a total of 834 children, youth and adults, through their residential and community-based intervention programs combined.

This snapshot documents the experience of Rohingya refugees in Malaysia, shedding light on protection risks that negatively impact their safety and well-being. This snapshot is one of a series that focuses on Rohingya journeys and experiences in Southeast Asia, with the key objective of contributing to building a solid evidence base to inform advocacy and protection programming for Rohingya refugees in the region.

The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action CPMS Working Group held an interactive webinar to support members in engaging and completing the recently distributed Self-Assessment Process for the Child Protection Minimum Standards

The social service workforce plays an important role within social protection systems by connecting children, individuals, and families with a range of social services across sectors. Despite the increasing challenge of poverty and vulnerability exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, conflict and climate change, as well as the increasing recognition of the role of social service workers, investments in strengthening the workforce remain low across most countries. This presentation aims to clarify the role of the social service workforce in the social protection system. It also outlines key considerations for strengthening the social service workforce in their integral role in delivering effective and efficient social protection programmes and services.

This global webinar addressed the need to give greater priority to adolescent mental health, globally, and particularly in low- and middle- income countries. Experts from RTI International, Plan International, Johns Hopkins University, and AstraZeneca share research findings and present new analysis of global data with the aim of motivating and guiding action to improve adolescent mental health.

Kinship care (care by extended family or friends of the family) is the most common form of alternative care in the region, yet also the least well-supported.  This webinar explains why it is vital to invest in kinship care and provide examples of promising practic

This study sets out a framework to help reduce the number of children living in poverty and prevent more families from falling into financial distress.

Disrupting Harm in South Africa is the 13th in a series of reports which shares the findings of children’s perceptions of and participation in various online practices, as well as exposes their experiences of online child sexual exploitation and abuse in South Africa.

This is the monthly update of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Learning Platform published in October 2022. 

У цьому звіті Незалежна міжнародна слідча комісія по Україні посилатиметься на висновки щодо подій наприкінці лютого та в березні 2022 року в чотирьох областях: Київській, Чернігівській, Харківській та Сумській, відповідно до вимог резолюції S-34/1 Ради з прав людини. 

В этом отчете Независимая международная комиссия по расследованию событий в Украине будет ссылаться на выводы о событиях в конце февраля и марте 2022 года в четырех областях: Киевской, Черниговской, Харьковской и Сумской, как того требует резолюция Совета по правам человека S-34/1.

In this report, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine will refer to findings about events during late February and March 2022 in the four regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and Sumy, as requested by Human Rights Council resolution S-34/1. 

This ISS study of the child protection system as it particularly relates to alternative care was commissioned by UNICEF Ukraine. This report contains an overview of the child protection and alternative care system in Ukraine based on the process of a desk review and a 10 day fact finding mission in Ukraine in February 2020 undertaken by a team of experts from International Social Service (ISS).

În 2021-2022, CTWWC în parteneriat cu trei organizații ale societății civile: Keystone Moldova, Copil, Comunitate, Familie (CCF Moldova) și Asociația Parteneriate pentru Fiecare Copil (P4EC), a realizat o serie de cercetări la nivel național, inclusiv evaluarea complexă a șase instituții rezidențiale (IR).

During 2021-2022, Changing the Way We Care in partnership with three civil society institutions: Keystone Moldova, Child, Community and Family (CCF Moldova) and Partnerships for Every Child (P4EC), conducted a series of assessments on the national level, including a complex evaluation of six residential institutions (RI).

Para garantizar que las personas que han vivido en cuidados alternativos puedan participar de los procesos y decisiones para mejorar los sistemas de cuidado, Doncel junto a la Red Latinoamericana de Egresados de Protección, Better Care Network y Cambiando la Forma en Que Cuidamos (Changing The Way We Care en inglés) llevaron adelante el primer mapeo regional de activistas que vivieron en cuidados alternativos en América Latina y el Caribe.

This document outlines 5 key steps that serve as an effective blueprint for a successful reintegration process of children and disabilities. These include ‘engagement’, ‘Assessment’, ‘Design & Development’, ‘Transition’, and ‘Monitoring & Evaluation’.

This report presents the findings from the National Survey of Residential Centres for Children with Disabilities in Rwanda. The survey aimed at gathering comprehensive and disaggregated data related to residents’ characteristics, staff profile, and the minimum standards for the centres.

This study is part of the response to the global call for the provision of quality alternative family-based care and prevention of family separation for children with disabilities. The study is premised on the view that the knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding the attributes assigned to, and the conceptualization of, children with disabilities in their families and communities, vis-à-vis institutional care for children with disabilities, are also crucial determinants of barriers/ enablers of full and meaningful integration of children with disabilities into community life in Rwanda.

This paper concentrates on the discussion of some contextual issues along with the challenges that are closely associated with social work practice at Macro, Mezzo and Micro levels of intervention. Here in the paper, theoretical approaches and techniques that are significantly applicable in social work practice have been presented along with some challenge-related contexts in social work practice in Bangladesh.

In order to understand the issues faced by the children and young people who get in touch with child helplines, Child Helpline International interviews members around the world every year to gather information about the contacts they receive. This report provides an overview of the information recieved for 2021. 

This paper aims to enable policy makers, civil society and advocacy groups to better articulate the value of the social service workforce in health systems through a presentation of the latest evidence on social service workforce roles, functions and promising practice models, and related influence on health outcomes and costs. Based on interviews, research and data from a range of countries, it outlines key challenges, opportunities and recommendations around effective and sustained deployment of the social service workforce when located in or linked to health facilities.

This report introduces the limitations of orphanages, the importance of caring for children in families, and how to shift support to strengthen families, increase alternative family care options, and empower communities. This resource shares inspiring stories, engaging graphics, and explores tangible examples of work being done around the world to see children cared for in safe and loving families.

The purpose of this guidance is to advise policy makers and planners on how to apply a set of variables to their specific context to enable them to calculate the costs of human resources required to meet a target minimum ratio of social service workers per population, in the country in question. The guidance first discusses the essential steps that need to be taken to prepare for a costing exercise, and then the specific steps to take in a costing exercise for the workforce, which are outlined in the costing tool itself (to be released at a later date).

Although care reform is well established in some parts of the Eastern and Southern Africa, many countries in the region are just beginning their care reform journey. This short paper is aimed at these contexts. It explains what care reform is, the different components of care reform, why care reform is important and how to start a care reform process. 

Key lessons learnt on how to carry out effective care reform in Eastern and Southern Africa from the COVID 19 pandemic.

The Scottish Parliament’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee has published its latest report on kinship carers, calling for improved support for carers.

This thematic report is a merged and synthesised version of two full study reports, each focusing on education and healthcare in Malaysia. More details regarding the background, methodology, findings and recommendations of this project are found in the respective study reports.

This report aims to understand digital childhoods, and what can be achieved through the Online Safety Bill to protect children online. The Children’s Commissioner’s Office (CCo) commissioned a survey of 2,005 children aged 8-17 and their parents. This survey is nationally representative of children in England, by age, gender and region. All statistics mentioned in this report are from this survey.

This qualitative study designed to identify potential prognostic factors relating to the outcome of children placed in a welfare center or foster care before the age of 4 years was based on the analysis of 34 case histories of children placed in a welfare center or foster care in Angers.

This study aims to provide an overview of the world's children who lack parental care in the light of the theoretical background and the latest research.

This paper aims to analyse how State policies, on the book and in practice, shape family reunification. It focuses on child migration under constraint in France, by analysing the timing and factors of (non-)reunification among foreign immigrants, whose legal conditions for family reunification are much more restrictive than for those who obtained the French citizenship.

This video and attached parenting tips offer simple and practical recommendations for Ukrainian parents on how to help themselves and their children to overcome various crisis situations.

This paper aims to analyse how State policies, on the book and in practice, shape family reunification. It focuses on child migration under constraint in France, by analysing the timing and factors of (non-)reunification among foreign immigrants, whose legal conditions for family reunification are much more restrictive than for those who obtained the French citizenship.

This book examines the involvement of those with care experience in the criminal justice system in an Australian jurisdiction. The majority of children in care do not come into contact with the youth justice system. However, among children involved in the youth justice system, those with care experience are overrepresented. The authors focus on the process of colonialisation and criminalisation, rather than crime. 

This study, based in Romania, examined longitudinal data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care following exposure to severe psychosocial deprivation.

This joint statement was issued while the question of illegal intercountry adoptions is being raised in several countries, with an increasing number of adoptees discovering inconsistencies or errors in their adoption process, and that stories they had been told about their origins and the reasons for their adoptions were fake.

This article analyses the accounts of children’s spokespersons in Norway, whose mandate is to speak with and forward children’s views in care proceedings. The analyses show how constructions of loyalty, family interdependence, and individualism may inform spokespersons’ interpretations of children’s views, and thereby their exploratory practices in their conversations with the children.

The aim of this systematic review is both to summarize findings regarding the prevalence of mental health disorders among unaccompanied refugee minors (URM) in European countries since the last available systematic review (October 2017), and to describe associated risk factors.

In this chapter of the book 'Human Rights and Social Justice', the authors focus their attention on issues and challenges facing rural youth who have exited care, with special consideration of First Nation or Indigenous youth in Canada, and offer a multidimensional framework that can support anti-colonial and anti-oppressive models of practice.

This book 'Youth Without Family to Lean On' draws together interdisciplinary, global perspectives to provide a comprehensive review of the characteristics, dynamics, and development of youth (aged 15–25) who have no family to lean on, either practically or psychologically.

Despite rising numbers of unaccompanied child migrants in the Americas, very limited research directly engages with youth as they journey north to seek protection in the United States. In this article, the authors examine young Central American migrant experiences of bordering, focusing on policing and shelter management.

In this scoping review the authors analyze the findings of studies conducted over the past two decades that have specifically examined face-to-face contact with birth parents for children in non-kinship foster care, with the goal of determining more clearly when it may contribute positively to the child's well-being. The review involved a search of nine electronic databases in Spain, the U.S., Portugal, and the UK.

In this theoretical paper, the authors argue that, due to the detrimental impact of parental loss on academic achievement in France, orphaned students should be considered as students with special educational needs. This is important to provide appropriate educational responses consistent with inclusive education.

This paper contributes to the scholarship on refugee law and resettlement by exploring the ways in which the crisis in the Uyghur homeland in Turkey has impacted and continues to impact Uyghurs’ refugee narratives and priorities as they reorganize their lives in the diaspora.

This U.S.-based study details the prevalence of youth at the intersection of parental incarceration and foster care, their demographic characteristics, and heterogeneity in their mental health.

The aim of this study was to investigate (a) the extent to which child maltreatment co-occurs with parental separation and (b) associations between different types of child maltreatment and various types of separation-associated interparental conflict. This cross-national comparative study on family dynamics was based on National survey data of the US, Russia and 17 European countries indicates that in these countries 10–44% of the couples with children had separated before one of their children reached the age of 15 years.

Family foster care is the option of choice in case of out-of-home placements in Flanders, Belgium, resulting in rising numbers of family foster care placements. As a number of the foster children experienced traumatic events and all of them were separated from their primary caregivers, concerns can be raised about the quality of attachment between foster children and their foster carers. In this study, the attachment behavior was scored by the foster mothers on the Attachment Insecurity Screening Index.

The aim of this study was to investigate the circumstances that contribute to the future anxiety affecting looked after children in Poland as they move to independence.

The study aims to comprehend the ways in which being raised by grandparents, influence the vulnerable children’s schooling. The aim is to contribute insights to our understanding on how these children’s education towards academic success could be enhanced.

This chapter examines practical insight from research conducted across the UK and elsewhere in Europe of the contexts that children were experiencing, the pre-existing causes of some of the challenges and examples of children providing evidence about their experiences and insights into how policy and services could better respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article addresses the predicament of family service systems being built on parents’ voluntary participation and the need for parental consent, which may block children’s right to services. It examines parental consent and the impact of parental non-consent for children’s opportunities to receive protection and support in Swedish child and family welfare.

This paper examines the understanding of poverty emerging in voluntourists’ accounts of their first-hand experiences of poverty alleviation. Based on the ethnography of an orphanage in Nepal, the authors show that despite voluntourists’ good intentions and even (self-)criticism of the volunteer tourism approach to poverty relief, their accounts tend to consolidate rather regressive ideas about poverty.

This global study reviewed the literature on family-based mental health interventions for refugees across migration contexts and settings to identify types of interventions and intervention components, implementation approaches and to assess effectiveness. The review used a systematic approach, and ten intervention studies were retained for analysis.

This report reviewed evidence for the effects of psychosocial neglect on development derived from studies of young children raised in U.S. institutions. In these caregiving environments, children are physically safe and receive instrumental care, but the social, emotional, and cognitive components of caregiving are impoverished. The damaging and often lasting effects of these caregiving environments on young children's development underscore that psychosocial neglect should be considered as dangerous to child well-being as physical maltreatment.

This U.K.-based study explored the life experiences of care experienced adults in higher education to understand the factors that impeded or enhanced their journeys.

This U.S.-based study seeks to determine if COVID-19 has resulted in unique impacts on foster care alumni, and if these impacts are the same for LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ transition age youth.

While several interventions have been put in place to address the needs of persons with disabilities in developed countries, their counterparts in low-income countries, such as Ghana, continue to face marginalisation and exclusion. Using user-perspective and co-production approaches, this report analyses existing services for Ghanaians with disabilities and the relevance and usefulness of these services.

OBJETIVOS DEL ESTUDIO: Identificar y documentar mejores prácticas en la prestación de servicios residenciales de cuidado, orientados a la transformación de servicios de cuidado de la niñez y adolescencia en Guatemala.

Estudio orientado a la transformación de servicios de cuidado residencial a familiar y comunitario de la niñez y adolescencia en Guatemala.

Cambiando la Forma en que Cuidamos (o sus siglas en inglés, CTWWC) Guatemala realizó un estudio con el objetivo de identificar y documentar buenas prácticas en la prestación de servicios de cuidado residencial, con el objetivo de transformar los servicios de cuidado a la niñez en Guatemala.

This paper reviews the range of factors state legislation includes in the U.S., reviews scant existing literature on how termination of parental rights (TPRs) may effect youth, and proposes several options for ways that unproductive TPRs can be reduced, and timely reinstatements increased.

Most residential children's social care services in England, including children's homes, are operated by for-profit companies, but the implications of this development are not well understood. This paper aims to address this gap by undertaking the first longitudinal and comprehensive evaluation of the associations between for-profit outsourcing and quality of service provision among English local authorities and children's homes.

COVID-19 led to widespread disruption of services that promote family well-being. Families impacted most were those already experiencing disparities due to structural and systemic barriers. Existing support systems faded into the background as families became more isolated. New approaches were needed to deliver evidence-based, low-cost interventions to reach families within communities. The authors adapted a family strengthening intervention developed in Kenya (“Tuko Pamoja”) for the United States.

This study sought to explore the psychological well-being, academic adjustment, and quality of parental attachment of LBC during COVID-19 in rural China based on Left-Behind Children’s (LBC) word of mouth.

The purpose of this study was to establish the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in child residential care and to explore predictors of accumulation and clustering patterns.

This infographic describes how child welfare organizations can center child welfare worker well-being to better support children and families.

This article focuses on some of the care leavers networks in South Asia. 

У цьому відео ми пропонуємо прості і практичні рекомендації про те, як у цей непростий час допомагати собі та своїм дітям долати різні кризові ситуації.

The Adolescent Data Portal features global, regional and country-level data on key indicators together with information on the socio-economic contexts in which adolescents live are found here. The portal includes globally comparable indicators, closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

In this webinar three members from the Family for Every Child alliance present how they support the mental health of vulnerable children they work with in their different contexts, sharing their programmes and methodologies and responding to questions from audience members.