This country brief is part of a series that aims to provide an analysis of children’s living and care arrangements according to the latest available data from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) or Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys (MICS) at the time of publication.
This article examines the case for greater recognition of the children’s workforce in out-of-home care (OHC), and situates the concept of ‘expertise’ in the rise of recognition of children’s status as competent social actors, as well as in professionalisation debates.
The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between loneliness, self-efficacy, and satisfaction with life of Left-behind middle school students in China.
In South Africa, large increases in early adult mortality during the 1990s and early 2000s have reversed since public HIV treatment rollout in 2004. In a rural population in KwaZulu-Natal, the authors of this study investigated trends in parental mortality and orphanhood from 2000–2014.
Using survey data consisting of 5002 eighth graders from 160 middle schools in northwestern China, this paper investigates how parental migration affects children’s non-cognitive abilities, as is measured by Big Five components of conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and openness, as well as children’s grit.
This column from Volume 23 of the American University Washington College of Law Human Rights Brief explores the links between child abuse in Cambodian orphanages and tourism.
The authors of this study examined legal understanding and attitudes among 201 parents involved in ongoing dependency cases in California and Florida via semi-structured, in-person interviews.
This paper presents evidence of how social protection approaches can contribute to child protection outcomes and outlines recommendations which call for strong mobilization and uptake by governments, UN and multilateral development agencies, regional bodies, donors, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).
This guide is the first of its kind which comprehensively addresses the best practice for placing Looked After Children currently in the UK into the care of a family member(s) who lives in another country.
Following thousands of comments and responses posted by the 8,000 course participants for the MOOC on COVID-19: Adapting Child Protection Case Management, as well as research and evidence being issued by child protection agencies, three international experts were invited to provide short videos containing advice and opinions of experts in different regions of the world regarding the need to plan for support for children for the evolving situation of COVID-19 and in particular post-pandemic scenario.
This report notes existing gaps and needs in social service provision and provides recommendations for specific actions to strengthen the social welfare workforce in Ghana.
In response to the need for accurate and reliable statistics on children in residential care, UNICEF has developed the first-ever comprehensive methodology to collect data on children living in residential care settings by applying a number of preexisting tools from international survey programmes, such as the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) and other validated instruments, to an institutional population.
This report presents the findings of the 2019-2020 assessment conducted within the Pilot assessment of residential healthcare facilities for children and development of recommendations for reform in five baby homes of Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Kherson regions of Ukraine. In addition to the findings from the assessment of baby homes, the report presents results from the region assessments regarding needs in the medical rehabilitation, paediatric palliative care, and social services for children aged 0-6 years and their families.
The ECDI2030 is a tool, developed by UNICEF, to measure progress toward SDG indicator 4.2.1. It captures the achievement of key developmental milestones by children between the ages of 24 and 59 months. Mothers or primary caregivers are asked 20 questions about the way their children behave in certain everyday situations, and the skills and knowledge they have acquired.
This paper explores the question: What does the literature tell us about how many children worldwide are in institutions/orphanages; how likely they are to be exploited and in which ways; and what interventions are most effective in preventing this?
This situation analysis explores multidimensional poverty in Uganda, including an examination of both material and social needs of children – including health care and education, a social and family life, clean and safe drinking water, housing that is not squalid and overcrowded, adequate clothing, and regular meals with sufficient and nutritious food.
This study focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic affects children aged 11-17 in India, including impacts on violence against children and social protection for children.
Having the best interest principle and taking into account the individual needs of each child in intercountry adoptions, this paper endeavours to promote the two tier approach of the principle of subsidiarity by examining the drafting spirit behind international standards (Section 1), providing examples of legislation and jurisprudence (Section 2) and identifying promising practices (Section 3) that reflect the principle.
This rapid evidence assessment (REA) aimed to answer three questions: (1) What interventions have been effective in ensuring the protection of children on the move? (2) What are the implementation factors that make these interventions effective or that hamper effectiveness (for example the context of the intervention, and specific design features such as who is targeted)? and (3) What kinds of social welfare and child protection systems are linked to effective interventions?
This document includes a summary of Save the Children's work to strengthen civil society organizations in Kosovo, with a particular focus on banning corporal punishment in all settings.
This Russian language Compendium documents UNICEF’s social policy interventions in Europe and Central Asia from 2014-2020 and includes 18 case studies from 15 different countries as well as stories from the field.
This article presents data from the first large-scale study of fathers involved in repeat (or recurrent) care proceedings in England. The study consisted of three elements: an analysis of population-level administrative data from the Child and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS), a survey of fathers in pre-proceedings and care proceedings, and a qualitative longitudinal (QL) study of recurrent fathers.
This study used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project – a randomized controlled trial of foster care for children raised in psychosocially depriving institutions – to examine the associations of the caregiving environment with reward processing, executive functioning, and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology at ages 8, 12, and 16 years, and evaluated whether these associations change across development.
This research focused on a U.S. statewide program that uses team decision-making meetings to identify needs and plan services for youth who are at risk for instability while in foster care.
This study of distributed parenting and new ideas about what it means to raise a child properly is informed by over three decades of research among the Bamiléké.
The overarching purpose of this exploratory study was to understand how foster parents’ parenting-related stress levels have changed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the role of sociodemographic characteristics in exacerbating risk for increased stress.
This article argues that the patchwork of legal protections across U.S. states means that many LGBTQ-headed families lack needed security, stability, and legal recognition.
The current study is the first to explore the prevalence of reproductive coercion among adolescent women currently or previously involved in the U.S. foster care system.
This article proposes a methodological workflow for data analysis by machine learning techniques that have the possibility to be widely applied in social issues.
The current paper aims to suggest a framework for risk and protective factors that need to be considered in child protection in its various domains of research, policy, and practice during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article considers the potential efficacy of the para social workers (PSW) model in strengthening child protection at community level in Uganda.
This report presents findings from a survey conducted across the Europe and Central Asia Region which aimed to enhance understanding of the use of digital platforms for child protection.
This guidance on reception conditions for unaccompanied children was created by the European Asylum Support Office in order to support the development of reception tools, but also to enable the planning and provision of adequate care for children on the move.
This guidance is intended to support humanitarian workers in Europe working with unaccompanied and separated children.
For this study, an exploratory theoretical thematic analysis of the narratives of residential childcare workers in child welfare (RCWs) was performed to further understanding about the nature of the psychological distress reported by RCWs.
This article presents a brief scoping review of the literature on the educational outcomes of care experienced children and young people in Australia published since 2010.
For this study, a qualitative case file review was carried out to examine the nature of violence recorded in the narratives of 91 prenatal child protection reports from a single Australian jurisdiction in 2014.
This document analyzes the impact of international remittances on child labor and school attendance for children aged between 12 and 18 in Santiago de Cali, Colombia.
This report presents findings from an evaluation of the House Project (HP) in the U.K., which aims to improve outcomes for young people (in accommodation, education, employment and training (EET), wellbeing, autonomy and integration) and service level outcomes for young people leaving care aged 16 and over.
This report is based on the voices and experiences of care experienced young people who have been, or are currently, homeless across Wales. The aim of this research is to amplify these young people’s voices to highlight the challenges they have faced when homeless and the need for reform of systems which have failed to prevent their homelessness.
This report provides the detailed findings from a survey on the proportion of youth in foster care in New York City who are LGBTQAI+ and differences in their experiences compared to those of youth who are not LGBTQAI+.
This report presents the opinions of foster parents in Poland on their cooperation with teachers.
The purpose of this study is to test the validity of the Assessment Checklist measures in assessing complex mental health and behavioural difficulties of children and young people in care attending a specialist mental health service in Queensland, Australia.
This study, a systematic review, examines various forms of housing problems and their relationship to different types of child welfare involvement.
This study used the 2000–2017 waves of the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting Systems. The authors identified foster care entries among children removed from their homes because of parental drug use (PDU) and calculated the number of entries for each year. They also identified foster care discharges achieved through parental reunification among children removed from their homes each year.
This article presents empirical results from a study (2015–2018) on young people leaving care in Luxembourg. A special focus deals with the processes of transitioning from care to work.
This article studies how three groups of professional decision-makers – child welfare workers, experts on children and judges – exercise discretion in decisions on adoption from care in the Norwegian child welfare system.
This study analyzed 10 years of federal child welfare data to understand the effect of foster care placement, provider, and support factors for children in foster care due to parental substance use disorder.
The purpose of this study was to determine the (1) overall cost for implementing the Safe Environment for Every Kid (SEEK) model, (2) cost of implementation per child, and (3) cost per case of maltreatment averted.
This article examines how unaccompanied young refugees in Sweden relate to and talk about their everyday lives and life plans during a time of transition from childhood to adulthood.
The authors of this paper developed and validated a questionnaire to thoroughly assess unAccompaniEd miGrant mInorS’ physical, psychological, legal, spiritual, social and educational needs (AEGIS-Q).
This article explores children’s views and experiences of participation within the context of child protection assessment practice.
This study sought to determine whether home environments with higher levels of emotional support and cognitive stimulation predict later academic achievement and whether this relationship is moderated by placement type (i.e. biological/adoptive parent care, kinship care, or non-kinship foster care). This study included 1,206 children from the second U.S. National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW-II) who were involved with Child Protective Services (CPS) between 2–7 years of age.
The UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti has produced the Children and COVID-19 Research Library to highlight the available global scientific research and evidence on children and the coronavirus pandemic.
This Child Protection learning brief, the second in a series, has been prepared for UNICEF country offices and practitioners as they respond to mental health and psychosocial impact during the pandemic.
The Child Protection Learning Brief Series aims to extract, synthesise and analyse learning on child protection risks and programme adaptation in the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to improving policy, advocacy and programme results during infectious disease outbreaks.
This learning brief, the first in a series, has been prepared for UNICEF country offices and practitioners as they respond to gender-based violence during the pandemic.
The objective of this guidance is to lay out key arguments for close collaboration across Social Protection and Child Protection to address the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 on children and families towards reduction of adverse Child Protection outcomes.
The aim of this article is to reflect on the consequences of the global pandemic on the child welfare system, analysing the main consequences on children, adolescents and educational teams. The context of analysis focuses on the author's experiences in the child welfare system in Catalonia (Spain) during the pandemic, through his work as a social educator and researcher.
This paper examines the ways in which anti-oppression and anti-racism perspectives can be included as an aspect of Child and Youth Care (CYC) thought and practice, with particular relevance to service provision for African Canadian families.
El meollo de este proyecto de investigación de dos años está en los testimonios de más de 300 jóvenes con experiencia en acogimiento en Albania, República Checa, Finlandia y Polonia. Su conciencia colectiva del proceso de finalización de la acogida nutrió directamente a los hallazgos y a las recomendaciones sobre políticas presentadas en este volumen.
This global report is a consolidation of six regional reports based on consultations conducted between April and August 2020 that used a qualitative approach. The report is organised around the three themes emerging from the data: (1) the impacts of COVID-19 on children and young people; (2) their resilient responses to these impacts personally, in their families and communities; and (3) the support that children and young people need to be safe, healthy and help to fight the further spread of the virus.
More than 100 child participants across East Asia convened with government officials to discuss the increased instances of child violence experienced during COVID-19 at World Vision’s Asia Pacific Child Well-Being Learning Exchange forum on 18 November 2020.
The objectives of the study are: 1) Identifying and classifying the level of child presence and the needs of children in the family and 2) implementation of integrated child protection models in families in integrated areas of West Timor.
The Young Voices survey was conducted primarily to establish the level of children’s awareness about their rights and understanding what critical issues they face in terms of their rights.
How is it best for adult-led organizations to reach out to children? Who should do so, and how can they do so safely? This guide provides some guidance on those questions and links to additional resources.
This Practitioner Guidance Paper shares the different approaches taken by three Family for Every Child Members to mitigate this disruption: moving to online learning for unaccompanied minors with METAdrasi in Greece; using the radio to provide far-reaching lessons with FOST in Zimbabwe; and engaging parents in their children's education using a socially-distanced homework collection system with CAP Liberia.
In this podcast series, Family for Every Child's CEO, Amanda Griffith, holds conversations with Members of the Family for Every Child Alliance to explore the topic of Care during COVID-19.
This Compendium documents UNICEF’s social policy interventions in Europe and Central Asia from 2014-2020 and includes 18 case studies from 15 different countries as well as stories from the field.
This Training Manual for Caregivers of Children with disabilities has been developed to equip caregivers of children with disabilities (which include biological parents, foster parents, adoptive parents, caregivers in institutions, caregivers in day care centers, healthcare providers, teachers of special needs schools, etc.) with the needed knowledge and skill in order for them to be able to provide the required quality of care for the children for them to grow and develop well and become productive in society.
This report from the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare Central Child Welfare Board reviews the state of children and child rights in Nepal in 2017.
This guide aims to facilitate provision of supervision, technical support and quality assurance for OVC services and interventions by different stakeholders in Uganda.
In 2019, UNICEF issued its first ever global Guidelines to Strengthen the Social Service Workforce for Child Protection. This two-module course is aligned to the Guidelines and aims to equip the learner with key strategies to strengthen social service workforce.
This technical note presents a conceptual framework for localisation in protection and education coordination. It includes a description of the role of coordinators and coordination groups in localization and examples of how localization can be integrated in the humanitarian program cycle.
The purpose of this study was to investigate sub-groups of adversity in a sample of adopted children in the UK and examine the association with later post-traumatic stress (PTS) symptoms.
This report describes the patterns of care for infants who first became looked after in Scotland when under 1 year of age between 1st April 2008 and 31st July 2017.
This report from Save the Children Norway explores what child welfare institutions in Norway are doing to protect children in their care from the risk of online sexual offences.
The aim of this study was to estimate prevalence rates and adjusted rate ratios of exposure to violent parental discipline among children with and without disabilities in middle- and low-income countries.
This report reflects on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on children. It compiles information gathered from 25 countries across Europe, and provides recommendations for improving public policies in the short and long-term to support better outcomes for children and families, including children in alternative care or at risk of separation.
The purpose of this study was to assess systematically Kenya’s strengths and limitations to implement a parent support program using a mixed-methods study design.
This report builds on analysis undertaken in 2019 and incorporates 2019 and 2020 funding and additional funding streams related to refugee contexts to get an updated picture of the state of child protection funding in humanitarian contexts.
The study is reflecting on the nature and features of social work with families with children, attempting to discuss social work as assistance and apprehension and to detect whether there is any causal link between the efficiency of social work and the narrative approach and the “unstoried”, “faceless” condition of the families. The authors argue that professional attitude aimed at providing child protection support is not possible without knowing the story of families with children.
To investigate psychopathological consequences for university students who were left-behind children (LBC) and to estimate the effects of one or both parents being migrants, the duration of left-behind experience, and parental absence during critical periods of growth on psychiatric morbidity, the authors of this study conducted an annual survey of all freshmen at a Chinese university from 2014 to 2018.
The present study aims to explore the associations between grandparenting styles and childhood depression, as well as the mediating role of childhood food insecurity on the focal associations among Chinese rural left-behind children.
This report intends to share the status of the child care homes (CCHs) in Nepal - facts and figures, problems, financial supports and progress.
The national report on the State of Children in Nepal, 2019 includes child related information - Constitutional and legal provisions, policy, programmatic efforts and results in line with the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Esta guía promueve la participación de los egresados del cuidado residencial de una forma empoderada, siendo siempre sensible a sus historias y experiencias. Promueve la dignidad, respeta los derechos y crea un espacio para que sus voces aboguen por un cambio positivo.
This systematic review synthesizes information about the relationships aging out foster youth have with their birth or stepparents after legally mandated separations in foster care.
The aims of the study were to (a) describe families who had participated in the Home Parenting Education and Support (HoPES) programme, (b) describe the key education content and support activities of the programme, and (c) identify the enablers and challenges in implementing HoPES.
Two parenting capacity assessment (PCA) protocols, with a short parent-child intervention embedded in each protocol, evaluated the potential for enhanced parenting to orient child placement decision.
This paper draws upon findings from a study which followed families through the process of pre-birth child protection assessment. It is argued that it is necessary to engage critically with the ‘first three years’ narrative that has become dominant in Scottish policy making and the impact this has had on child protection practice and the lives of families. The paper argues for a broader interpretation of ACEs focused on community and public health across the life course.
This study aims to examine the prevalence of overdose and the association with child removal in a cohort of marginalised women.
This paper maps multinational policy and legislation and its impact on the services to careleavers and the challenges they experience.
This study provides evidence from an evaluation of a bespoke family strengthening intervention for Child Support Grant beneficiaries in 10 urban communities in Johannesburg, South Africa.
This study employed a life-course perspective to reveal the dynamic developmental trajectories and concealed protective factors among college students with left-behind experience.
Drawing on a review of recent international literature, this article argues for the first time that an understanding of, and engagement with, the theory and practice of friendship is essential to working alongside those who have care experience.
Este informe de Changing the Way We Care revisa las opciones existentes de cuidado familiar alternativo en Guatemala y ofrece recomendaciones para otras modalidades y prácticas.
This report from Changing the Way We Care reviews the range of available alternative care options in Guatemala and offers recommendations for additional alternative care modalities as well as deinstitutionalization and family preservation practices.
Este documento presenta el proceso, los resultados y las lecciones aprendidas durante la implementación de una iniciativa en Guatemala que instale buenas prácticas para la prevención de la separación familiar innecesaria y el fortalecimiento de las familias a través de las búsqueda y acercamiento de servicios sociales primarios y especializados.
