This report presents child protection data from March to September 2020 (covering the ‘first wave’ of COVID-19 restrictions for Australia, and part of the ‘second wave’ of restrictions for Victoria) with comparisons to the same period in 2019.

In this brief, the authors propose a set of enhanced Infant-Toddler policies—in the areas of income support, child care, and paid family leave—to better support families and improve their children’s long-term health and wellbeing.

This issue of the Future of Children focuses on the first years of life starting with in utero experiences.

This care system assessment is intended to support the Government of Kenya to assess and strengthen the national, formal care system.

This toolkit contains caseworker forms for: conducting child and family assessments, consent and assent from caregivers and children, case planning, placement of children and young adults, monitoring, case reviews, case closures, referrals, caregiver and child feedback, and more.

This Facilitator’s Guide is for use by the varied facilitators of the 'Promoting Family- or Community-Based Care Using a Case Management Approach Workshop,' including national and county trainer of trainers from Kenya's Department of Children's Services, and trained staff from other care reform partners.

This guide provides an overview of the principles and practices of case management for reunification and placement of children outside of parental care (e.g., children from Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs) and Statutory Children’s Institutions (SCIs) , and street-connected children) into family- and community-based care in Kenya.

This handbook is a key tool for supporting care reform in Kenya, promoting family-based alternative care for children, and moving away from institutional care. 

Kenya's Department of Children’s Services (DCS), and its care reform partners within government and civil society, developed this Facilitator’s Training Manual for training on implementing the Guidelines for the Alternative Family Care of Children with the intent to streamline and standardize alternative family care services in Kenya through standardized training. This comprehensive training package includes the training facilitator’s manual, PowerPoint presentations, handouts, case studies, and video clips.

The current study aimed to examine effects of pre-adoptive risk on long-term functioning in children adopted from foster care.

This chapter reviews the state of the art in the study of caseworkers' psychosocial processes underlying the out-of-home placement decision following instances of child maltreatment by integrating existing literature on both child protection and social psychology.

This mixed methods research project, involving twenty participating local authorities and eight voluntary organisations from a wide geographic spread across England, was carried out between 2017 and 2019. The study was designed to investigate fathers and their recurring appearance in care proceedings at a macro, meso and micro level, with each element collecting and analysing data for distinct but related research questions.

This paper argues that kinship care – the care of children by relatives or friends of the family – represents the greatest resource available for meeting the needs of girls and boys who are orphaned or otherwise live apart from their parents.

This toolkit is developed for use by the Department of Children’s Services (DCS) and its partners engaged in care reform in Kenya. The tools herein are designed for a rapid situational analysis of children’s care institutions/statutory care institutions (CCI/SCIs) and the children living in them, and as a complement to any information already existing in the child protection information management system (CPIMS) or other government endorsed data.

The purpose of the situational analysis is to provide a snapshot of Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs), other private childcare institutions and Statutory Children’s Institutions (SCIs), and the children living in them in Nyamira County, Kenya.

The purpose of the situational analysis is to provide a snapshot of Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs), other private childcare institutions and Statutory Children’s Institutions (SCIs) and the children living in them in Kilifi County, Kenya.

The purpose of the situational analysis is to provide a snapshot of Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs), other private childcare institutions and Statutory Children’s Institutions (SCIs), and the children living in them in Kisumu County, Kenya.

The purpose of the situational analysis is to provide a snapshot of Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs), other private childcare institutions and Statutory Children’s Institutions (SCIs), and the children living in them in Kiambu County, Kenya.

The purpose of the situational analysis is to provide a snapshot of Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCIs) (registered and unregistered), and Statutory Children’s Institutions (SCIs), and the children living in them in in Murang’a county, Kenya.

The purpose of this situational analysis is to provide a snapshot of charitable children’s institutions (CCIs), other private childcare institutions and statutory children’s institutions (SCIs) in Kenya, and of the children living in them.

This paper asks the questions: What can we learn from the pandemic—and federal, state, and local governmental responses— about the cracks in the child welfare system? What lessons can be carried forward post-pandemic?

This evaluation study examined a Family Services Centre (FSC) operating in a socio‐culturally deprived suburban area of Southern Italy to explore how to promote innovative practices to meet increasingly complex family needs.

The aim of this study was to examine the experiences of mothers regarding their mothering role after participation in the ‘Mamma Trots Allt’ (MTA) program, a support program for mothers with cognitive limitations who have children in placement.

This study aims to analyse the interaction between children in foster care and their main caregivers during a microcoded co‐construction task, focusing on the verbal and non‐verbal behaviours that the adults use to promote a secure attachment in the child.

This paper examines the discretionary reasoning of the judiciary in three jurisdictions, England, Germany and Norway, in cases deciding whether a newborn child is safe with her parents or intervention is necessary.

This research examines the intersection of cross-cultural practice and child maltreatment investigations.

This article explores child welfare workers’ experiences of children’s participation in decision making in the child protection system.

Our Way outlines a framework for transformational change that will occur over the next 20 years, representing a long-term commitment by government and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community to work together to improve the life outcomes of vulnerable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children.

These Principles are designed to inspire and provide guidance on legislative, policy and practical reforms on the upholding of children’s rights born through surrogacy.

These Practitioner Guidance Papers share the approaches of five Family for Every Child members in adapting existing helplines or setting up new ones during the COVID-19 pandemic

This report from Amnesty International presents testimonies from six parents residing in Australia, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey who have been separated from their children, who are "trapped" in China.

The current study aimed to examine effects of pre-adoptive risk on long-term functioning in children adopted from foster care.

The aim of this study was to investigate care activities and considerations related to the care provision of child-centered care for children growing up in families experiencing complex and multiple problems (FECMP).

This study explored Orphans Rights in accessing the educational support in selected public secondary schools in Lusaka district.

The study sought to reveal socio-psychological factors of successful integration of institutionalized adolescents into mainstream schools.

The objective of the present study was to characterize unaccompanied minors in Portugal and understand the processes of transition into the age of majority, using a mixed-methods approach.

Using data collected from two provinces in China through an online survey, the current study aimed to investigate left‐behind children's emotional and academic adjustment during the COVID‐19 pandemic in China.

This article examines pilot results for the culturally adapted Weaving Healthy Families (WHF) program to promote resilience and wellness while preventing substance abuse and violence among Native American (NA) families.

This study explores the recent adaptation of foster care (Koruyucu Aile) in Turkey.

This article explores the experience of institutionalization of Romanian children and Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological System Theory.

This study aimed to assess magnitude and associated factors of undernutrition among children aged 6–59 months in Ethiopian orphanage centres.

This document provides practical guidance to actors in humanitarian and development contexts on the adaptations and considerations needed to support children who are either currently in alternative care or are going into an alternative care placement during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This study reports on the rapid development and implementation of an eLearning and structured practice guide for visitation supervisors to help them facilitate virtual visits that promote parent-caregiver collaboration in support of the child.

This article presents children’s own meanings and experiences of having a voice, derived from a research collaboration between UnitingCare and Queensland University of Technology.

Adoptions Australia 2019–20, the 30th report in the series, covers the latest data on adoptions of Australia children and children from overseas, and highlights important trends in the number of adoptions dating back to 1995–96.

With 30 years since the adoption of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, this article discusses how the Charter has contributed to understanding and addressing children's rights to protection.

This review aims to synthesise recent research on informal network support for care leavers making the transition to adulthood.

This article explores the policy context and outcomes of the November 2020 announcement by the State (Labour Party) Government of Victoria in Australia that it would extend out-of-home care (OOHC) on a universal basis until 21 years of age starting 1 January 2021.

The current study used survival analysis to simultaneously examine the influence of maltreatment characteristics on the risk of receiving a PTSD diagnosis at any time in care following entry into care.

This article attempts to initiate a critical dialogue on the politics of love and attachment by investigating the way in which the concept of attachment governs the field of transnational adoption.

To investigate the challenges faced in addressing the needs of orphans and vulnerable children in Marondera, focus group discussions and interviews were utilised. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data in this study and the data was presented in themes.

This study uses a retrospective pre/post design to measure the impact of the pandemic on foster carers’ self-care.

This study examines secondary traumatic stress (STS), burnout and compassion satisfaction (CS) in Flemish foster care workers (FCW) during the COVID-19 lockdown.

This study examined the rates and correlates of first and repeat births in a national sample of females emancipating from foster care in the United States.

The current study used a resilience framework to describe youth experiences with their caseworkers, examine the association of youth–caseworker relationship quality with school engagement, and to examine the differential impact of youth–caseworker relationships on youth school engagement by level of youth risk (i.e. posttraumatic symptoms).

This article seeks to echo the voices of 36 children aged 10 to 12 who participated in a therapeutic primary to secondary transition initiative for looked after children.

This study describes the challenges faced by a child protection agency and community organization who partnered to reduce the overrepresentation of Black children reported to the child protection agency through implementation of a parenting support program.

This report, produced by the Department of Social Welfare and Ghana Statistical Service with UNICEF support, provides an overview of the main findings from a census of residential care facilities in Ghana, an enumeration of the child population in these facilities, and a survey on a representative sample of such population.

El Comité de los Derechos del Niño de la ONU se reunirá en un Día de Debate General sobre «Los derechos de la infancia y el cuidado alternativo», que se llevará a cabo en Ginebra durante dos medio días, el 16 y el 17 de septiembre de 2021. Este documento presenta directrices para participación y presentaciones.

Le Comité des droits de l’enfant des Nations Unies organisera à Genève une journée de débat général (JDG) sur le thème « Droits de l’enfant et protection de remplacement ». Les représentants des gouvernements, les mécanismes de défense des droits de l’homme des Nations Unies, les organismes et les institutions spécialisées des Nations Unies, les institutions nationales de défense des droits de l’homme, la société civile, le secteur privé et des experts individuels, ainsi que des enfants et des jeunes, sont invités à y participer.

As part of a public consultation to help feed into and guide the discussions at the 2021 Day of General Discussion, all interested stakeholders, whether adults or children, are encouraged to send written submissions to the Committee. This document includes guidelines for participation submission.

Esta nota de concepto incluye  información sobre el contexto, importancia, propósito, alcance, y objetivos claves del Día de Debate General 2021 al tema de «los derechos de la infancia y el cuidado alternativo».

Le Comité des droits de l’enfant des Nations Unies (le Comité) a décidé qu’en 2020, sa Journée de débat général (JDG) porterait sur les « Droits de l’enfant et la protection de remplacement ».

This concept note outlines the context, background, relevance, purpose, scope, and objectives of the 2021 Day of General Discussion on the theme of “Children’s Rights and Alternative care”.

This article from BMJ describes cross-sectoral collaborative efforts in Germany to enhance the skills of parents to care for young children.

This article describes how intersectoral collaboration between health, social protection, and education sectors enabled Chile Grows with You (Chile Crece Contigo) to help all children reach their full developmental potential.

This study uses a constructivist approach to analyse narrative interviews with a sample of Taiwanese intercountry adoptees in Australia ranging in age from early to middle adulthood.

This study uses a retrospective pre/post design to measure the impact of the pandemic on foster carers’ self-care.

This research focuses on Somalis living in a large English city where there is a significant shortage of Somali foster carers and adopters despite people of Somali heritage comprising a sizeable proportion of the care and city population.

This article seeks to echo the voices of 36 children aged 10 to 12 who participated in a therapeutic primary to secondary transition initiative for looked after children. Informed by a participatory action research approach, its focus was to facilitate the child’s voice.

Through the lens of primary (ability‐driven explanations) and secondary (choice‐based explanations, conditional on educational performance) effects on social background differentials in educational attainment, longitudinal data from more than 14 000 Swedes (of which around 9% have been placed in out‐of‐home care (OHC)) were used to estimate the relative importance of these two basic explanatory processes.

The present study seeks to examine the goals that carers who are looking after children with emotional and/or behavioural difficulties set at the start of an intervention, the Reflective Fostering Programme, designed to support them.

The authors of this study conducted a quasi-experimental feasibility trial in South Africa to adapt and evaluate an established year-long semi-structured, manualized video-feedback caregiver intervention (the Mediational Intervention for Sensitizing Caregivers; MISC) for community-based organizations (CBOs) to equip community-based careworkers with the skills to address the mental health needs of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC).

The authors of this study investigated the prevalence rates of childhood trauma, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms and suicidal behaviors among Vietnamese adolescents and compared the differences between institutionalized adolescents (IAs) and noninstitutionalized adolescents (NIAs). In addition, they examined the multidimensional associations between childhood trauma and psychopathology among IAs.

The aim of this article was to study and compare the depression and behavioral problems among children residing at welfare hostels and orphanages.

This article exploresthe extent to which general strain theory (GST) and self-control theory can explain the mental health outcomes of youth in-care.

The current study utilized survey data to determine if respondent characteristics and inter‐rater agreement on measures of important relationships were associated with resilience among child welfare‐involved youth.

This paper reports on a small-scale, qualitative evaluation of an approach to working with children in care launched in Brighton and Hove called Me and My World. Core principles of the model are explained including continuity of relationship between social workers and children in care; a statutory review process which promotes participation of the child and young person and a recording system where social workers, IRO’s and foster carers write reports for review directly to the child.

This publication presents the latest figures on children and young people in care in Northern Ireland.

This article explores mental health related issues in children and adolescents in childcare institutions in Sri Lanka.

Целью является исследование особенностей правового регулирования договорной опеки (попечительства) над несовершеннолетними детьми в современной России.

This review seeks to provide an overview of the existing research on residential care, including the function of residential care, what facilitates 'quality' care in residential care, and what effect residential care has upon outcomes for children and young people.

This paper will address one of the most challenging problems in development work which is commonly referred to as the ‘silo mentality’. In this case, this mentality affects how services for typical children are planned and implemented without including the needs of children with disabilities from the first planning step. Strategies are proposed that can help to bridge this gap.

In this study, the authors examine the structure and function of professional social workers’ follow-up questions in assessment talk with adoption applicants.

This study was designed to explore whether the incidence of child maltreatment among patients presenting to a pediatric emergency department has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This video tells the story of Kaloyan and Maria, twins who spent the first five months of their lives in an orphanage because social prejudice and poor health meant their parents could not care for them alone.

The interview data gathered in this study explored young adults’ well-being during the transition period from care to independent living under an English local authority and in Finland.

This article is based on ethnographic fieldwork in an Italian reception centre for male ‘unaccompanied minors’. The article examines the political ambivalence of hospitality for young African men as they transition to adulthood and how this is experienced through the intersections of age, gender and race.

This grounded theory study aimed to theorize pathways through which orphaned adolescents within institutional care navigate to achieve positive adaptation.

This paper aims to address the underexplored dilemma between protecting children and safeguarding mothering opportunities for care-experienced mothers.

This article explores population-level prevalence of Posttraumatic stress disorder for Young Children (PTSD-YC) to test whether application of Alternative Algorithm for PTSD (AA-PTSD) criteria, relative to the DSM-IV PTSD algorithm, increases identification of 5-6 year old children with clinical needs, in both the general population, and among looked-after-children where the risk of mental health issues is greater.

Families over Facilities is a call to action to end the unnecessary institutionalization of children in child welfare. The report details the physical, mental and emotional harm done to children in group settings, the significant unnecessary taxpayer costs associated with the practice, and violations of children’s civil and human rights.

This essay describes the impact of the pandemic on the authors' experiences as Independent Visitors (IVs) for children who are looked-after.

This issue of the e-journal CYC-Online includes articles on the impact of COVID-19 on children in alternative care in South Asia, residential care centers during COVID-19, child welfare experience among child and youth care practitioners, and more.

This article describes the steps taken by Udayan Care responded to the needs of children in their care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper is a condensed version of a study entitled “Beyond 18: Leaving Child Care Institutions - Supporting Youth Leaving Care: A Study of Aftercare Practices in Five States of India”, which found that upon turning 18, youth transitioning out of child care institutions to independent life in India experience many challenges, such as securing housing and identity documents; accessing education, skill development,  and employment opportunities; and garnering psychosocial support.

Este documento profundiza en la investigación de la inversión pública en aquellos programas o actividades en Guatemala que tienen como beneficiario final la niñez y adolescencia, separado de sus progenitores y que crece bajo el abrigo de una institución o de una familia extendida o sustituta.

This video tells the story of Georgi, a boy born with Down's Syndrome in Bulgaria whose parents were told they wouldn't be able to care for him and were encouraged to place him in an orphanage. They placed him in an orphanage and were later supported by Hope and Homes for Children to have him returned to their care.

This briefing paper - developed by UNICEF and the Social Policy Research Institute, in collaboration with the National Development Planning Commission - built on existing microdata, analyses of children’s vulnerabilities and specific phone survey data collected between March and June 2020. The paper outlines the primary and secondary impacts of COVID-19 on children in Ghana, including the impacts on vulnerable children such as children with disabilities, street-connected children, and children in residential care.