This 'companion primer' from the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) provides an overview of the ways in which adversity impacts brain development and how the use of appropriate interventions based on relationships can help reshape children's brains, leading to greater wellbeing and better outcomes for kids from hard places.

The purpose of the current study is to highlight the rates of suicidal ideation and behaviour in youth with out‐of‐home care experience, illuminating the empirical risk factors that may increase their vulnerability.

This study aimed to explain the development of the educational gap between children in “out‐of‐home care” (CLA), children deemed in social need (CIN), and other pupils.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of sleep medication and concomitant psychotropic medication in children and adolescents placed under residential care (RC) in Norway.

The objective of this study was to compare the effects of poverty and physical neglect on the development of problematic externalizing and internalizing behaviors, adaptive skills, and school problems among school children between the ages of 3 and 12.

This study aimed to investigate the impact of previous maternal migration experiences on left-behind children’s (LBC) mental health status and suicidal ideation, and the possible mediating role of parent-child communication.

This report presents findings and recommendations from an evaluation of the Fostering Wellbeing pilot initiative devised by The Fostering Network that was trialled in Cwm Taf, Wales.

This qualitative study has used ten focus groups with foster carers, eight interviews with mothers, and nine interviews with supervising social workers, to inform the development of an online learning resource and a social media-based peer support network for parent-and-child foster carers.

This study examined the impact of health care education materials designed for foster youth, called ICare2CHECK. It was hypothesized that ICare2CHECK would increase nonurgent ambulatory health care use and decrease emergency/urgent care use.

The study substantiates the organizational, psychological, pedagogical and socio-legal principles of creating a safe educational environment for children deprived of parental care, providing the proper conditions for their socialization, harmonious physical, mental, moral and volitional, and spiritual development.

This study examined the outcomes of a training aimed at enhancing child welfare practitioners’ use of data from the the Ontario Looking After Children (OnLAC) project for service planning related to young people’s educational outcomes.

Using the Attachment Theory as a guiding framework, this study sought to explore the effects of prolonged residential care for children.

This report presents demographic characteristics, health service access and use, and timing of key fertility-related milestones among adults aged 18–44 who had ever been in foster care as compared with those who had never been in foster care in the United States.

The current study examined the effects of implementing a new program model on the quality of relationships between direct care providers and residents in group care agencies.

This qualitative study examines the Minnesota One-Stop for Communities Parent Mentor Program (MPMP). African American parents previously involved in the child welfare system conceptualized and spearheaded this program for parents currently involved in the system to reduce the involvement of families of color in child welfare, provide support and build protective factors.

The research question examined in this study is whether unaccompanied minors (UAMs) in compulsory care receive more restrictive actions by compulsory care staff compared to their counterparts who are non-UAMs.

This study reports on trans adults’ fears of discrimination and openness to child characteristics in the adoption/foster care process in the U.S., relative to cisgender sexual minority parents.

The aim of this study is to explore foster child characteristics and the acceptance of foster children, by birth children and to compare mothers’ perceptions to birth children’s own perceptions.

The objectives of this study were: (a) to identify the rate of placement breakdown in Spain, understood as the unplanned termination of a foster placement; (b) to explore the variables associated with foster placement termination, and finally (c) to determine to what extent each variable can explain placement breakdown.

Using a qualitative approach, this study explores children’s contact maintenance with their incarcerated parents during parental incarceration.

The present study aimed to investigate both familial and mother/father-related risk and protective factors that influenced CPS (Child Protection Services) workers’ decision about the child placement through the “judgment analysis” approach.

This article aims to review briefly the broader social, historical, and structural contexts of mandated reporting and the linked phenomena of parenting surveillance and the forced separation of families of color in the U.S.

This article summarizes and analyzes the successful regional experience of foster care in Russia; the authors presented models of interaction between authorities, children and educators, allowing to create conditions for the formation of a socially responsible person, focused on the values of education.

This compilation contributes to the implementation of the objectives of the Action Plan on protecting refugee and migrant children in Europe, adopted by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe, by bringing together international and European standards on child-friendly practices in the context of migration with illustrations from practice of the kind of initiatives, programmes and procedures that serve to implement these standards.

Using a human-centered algorithmic design approach, the authors of this study synthesize 50 peer-reviewed publications on computational systems used in the U.S. Child Welfare System (CWS) to assess how they were being developed, common characteristics of predictors used, as well as the target outcomes.

In the current study, the authors identify specific child protective service experiences and mental and behavioral health characteristics that are predictive of moving from a family based foster placement to a congregate care placement.

This study raised the following research questions: To what extent is the right of a child separated from his or her natural parents to participate in decisionmaking respected? How does involvement in decision-making impact their psychosocial wellbeing?

This study aimed to explore the psychometric properties of the BERRI in its current form for use with Looked After Children (LAC) in residential care and to explore whether these properties might be enhanced through the extraction of factors.

This article presents findings from a thematic analysis of interviews with 13 foster parents who participated in a mixed methods study exploring inclusive foster care in Canada - an approach requiring foster parents to engage with the family, community, and cultural life of the child for whom they care.

Inspired by Merton and Barber’s sociological theory on ambivalence, this article analyses ‘co-parenting’ between foster parents and birth parents as prototypes of ambivalent relationships; that is, relationships based on incompatible role requirements.

This report presents the quantitative findings of the Growth Beyond the Town longitudinal research study since its inception in 2012 up until the end of 2018.

This study examined how foster parents worked together to parent foster children, how they described their roles and involvement with their foster children, how fostering impacted their coparenting and couple relationship, and their experiences and needs of working together with and within the foster care system.

The current randomized controlled trial examined the effectiveness of Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline in Foster Care (VIPP-FC) on parenting behavior and attitudes in foster parents.

This article explores age assessment methods used in estimating legal age or minor status of migrants and the need to minimize false positives with the aim of avoiding mistaken classification of a minor as of legal age.

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the associations between child maltreatment, cognitive schemas of disconnection/rejection reported in emerging adulthood, and social support perceived in emerging adulthood among young women who have exited placements in residential care.

Vulnerability has been a guiding narrative to state interventions towards children and their families in New Zealand. This article shows how this progressive notion has been systematically managed to fit pre-established political and policy priorities.

This article explores the impact of preadoption history upon physical, mental, emotional, cognitive, and developmental well‐being of children and the need for adoptive parents, medical and mental health professionals, and schools to understand these impacts.

This study reports findings from interviews with young adults with experience of kinship care in Ghana, about what lessons their kinship care experiences provided in their transition to adulthood.

As part of a broader action research project aiming to prevent both harmful sexual behaviour carried out by children and young people and child sexual exploitation (CSE) in out‐of‐home care, four focus groups were undertaken with 17 workers at three Victorian residential houses in Australia in 2017.

Using Swedish longitudinal registry data for a national cohort sample of siblings, in which some were placed in foster care and others remained in their birth parents’ care, this study asks whether long-term foster care ensures improved life chances.

This study used variations in the adoption and refund status of state-level Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a socioeconomic policy intended to reduce poverty, to examine their effect on foster care entry rates in the U.S.

This episode of the Mobituaries podcast describes the "Orphan Train" movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries - an initiative that sent 250,000 orphaned children from the crowded cities of the East Coast of the United States and sent to the rural Western United States from 1854 to 1929.

This study explored the impact of sociosexualization and sexual identity development on the sexual well-being of youth formerly in the foster care system.

With an ambition of supporting the design of effective preventive child welfare measures targeting children in out-of-home care (OHC), the overall aim of this thesis is to examine education as a possible intervention path for improving their development and overall life chances.

This paper applies the concept of total institutions, introduced by Erving Goffman, to the case of special care institutions for people [including children] with intellectual disabilities in present-day Russia.

This ASEAN Plan of Action, which complements the ASEAN Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children (ACTIP), aims to provide specific action plans within ASEAN Member States’ domestic laws and policies, as well as relevant international obligations, to effectively address regional challenges common to all ASEAN Member States in the identified major concerns.

The aim of this study was to identify what protective factors might exist amongst families who are identified as high risk by predictive risk models (PRMs).

The current study uses a nationally representative sample of adolescent foster youth in the U.S. to test a model of the influences of placement-related factors on school engagement – namely, foster youth’s perceptions of security in their foster placements, their reports of education-specific involvement by foster caregivers, and the mediating potential of adolescents’ expectations for their future.

Considering the importance of preventing and better understanding neglect, the present paper aims to describe and discuss similarities and differences among negligent families, comparing them to other families in terms of socioeconomic aspects and risk factors related to neglect.

This study aims to analyze different level predictors (sociodemographic and institutional history-related, emotional/relational and contextual level) of the quality of the relationship between adolescents and their caregivers, in a sample of 326 adolescent participants (228 female and 98 male) from 20 residential care institutions.

This research aimed to investigate grandparents’ perspectives on the impact of Leadership and Respite Camps, designed for children being raised by their grandparents, on their grandchildren.

In this paper, the authors first present five longitudinally socio-political-historical analytic themes appearing in many policy analysis approaches identified in a literature review, with special reference to child welfare policies. Then, as a case study, the authors apply these themes to understand the evolution of child welfare policies in Israel.

This article reports the findings of a small study investigating the experiences of care experienced young people in relation to higher education in England.

With research into traditionally understood contributing factors such as poverty, substance use, mental health and intimate partner violence abounding, this study sought to identify underexamined factors that potentially sustain very high rates of child welfare (CW) involvement for Black mothers.

This review aimed to compare child safety assessment instruments, which are used by child welfare professionals to determine whether a child is in immediate danger, and subsequently, whether immediate action is required to stop or prevent serious harm to the child.

The study set out to examine the extent to which children and young people before the Criminal Division of the Victorian Children’s Court in Australia were also clients of the statutory Child Protection system, and to better understand the characteristics of this group.

The current study uses data from a longitudinal randomized controlled trial to examine whether severe early neglect among children reared in institutions increases vulnerability to the effects of later stressful life events on externalizing problems in adolescence, and whether social enrichment in the form of high-quality foster care buffers this risk.

This report presents a summary of key achievements and future plans for Nottinghamshire County CCGs (excluding Bassetlaw) and Nottingham City CCG in the UK to fulfil their duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of looked after children

This article arises from an EdD thesis (Horsburgh, 2018) that sought to describe research undertaken to address a perceived gap in the literature by carrying out a detailed examination of the classroom learning of seven primary school aged, care‐experienced children.

Using Swedish registry national data, this study explored the relationship between immigration-country of birth status, psychosocial risk factors, and child compulsory care for parents with risky substance use (RSU).

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the process of going to college and subsequent college life of those who have experiences of entering Child Care Institutions (CCI) in Japan and to discuss higher education policies concerning ‘child poverty’ based on the results.

This randomized control trial aimed to assess how much Teach Your Children Well (TYCW) - a tutoring program that enhances the academic skills of children in care - tutoring is enough to accelerate learning.

This study employed a retrospective lens to explore adult experiences of their family post-deportation. Findings show that family went through a reorganization process after parental deportation which impacted how the child understood the deportation and affected the child’s perceptions and experiences of their parental loss.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the direct effect of perceived social support and the mediation role of resilience on left-behind children’s mental well-being.

In this report, Amnesty International UK, the Refugee Council and Save the Children expose how the UK Government’s policy on refugee family reunion is damaging the lives of children in the UK, and how its justifications for the policy are unsubstantiated.

This briefing note was developed by ReThink Orphanages Australia and the ACFID Child Rights Community of Practice to assist entities in Australia and abroad who have orphanages in their supply chains and/or operations to understand the implications of Australia’s Modern Slavery Act 2018. 

Based on the information gathered throughout the course of the Opening Doors for Europe’s Children campaign, this final report first reflects on: (1) the rationale for the campaign and how it operated; (2) the progress towards child protection system reform across campaign countries as well as the developments at the EU level; and (3) the lessons learnt from the campaign and some final recommendations to the European Union.

The following article reports upon recent research, which explored the perceptions of professionals of the issues that affect the sexual and criminal exploitation of children in care, along with a discussion of the effectiveness of current responses to these issues and the challenges that professionals face.

This article reviews the modern literature on the impact of institutional care from animal models to longitudinal studies in humans.

The purpose of this study was to examine factors related to unintentional child injury requiring medical attention, including child welfare placement type, child behavioral problems, caregiver characteristics, and neighborhood factors.

This article reviews the effects on children and youth of parent–child separation due to several of the most common reasons that are responsible for the growth in this family circumstance worldwide.

This article explores the inheritance rights of Indonesian citizens adopted by foreign nationals in terms of Indonesian inheritance law.

The study examined school adjustment among 119 internationally adopted children in Norway.

This study examined whether caseworker demographic factors, attitudes towards evidence-based practices (EBPs) and organizational factors predict caseworker referrals. Relying upon tenets of the Theory of Planned Behavior, this study also examined whether intention to refer predicts caseworker referrals to an EBP.

For this study, a sample of 365 adolescents in residential care settings in Portugal completed a set of self-reported measures, specifically, the Rights perceptions scale, the Place attachment scale and Scales of psychological well-being.

The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of young people with child protection meetings, in order to develop better ways to improve children’s participation in child protection in Ghana.

This study investigated the exactitude of claims on the existence of corrupt practices and systemic vulnerabilities within the child adoption domains in Nigeria.

This report details the 4th cycle of the Asia Pacific Child Protection in Emergencies Professional Development Programme (CPiE PDP) Residential Training, which took place in Thailand between October 21st and November 3rd, 2019.

Data and Trend Analysis (DATA) Refugees and Migrants at the Western Balkans Route Regional Overview, covering period July - September 2019, describes key trends in migrations in the region, detailing information about the number of people on the move, demography (age, sex, country of origin, etc), behavioral patterns, and routes in use - with a focus on children, particularly unaccompanied children.

The goal of this study is to examine child welfare caseworkers’ experience of secondary traumatic stress (STS) and the extent to which coping strategies act as a buffer.

The objective of the study was to examine the level of Resilience and psychological wellbeing among orphan and non-orphan adolescents; and to examine the influence of resilience on psychological wellbeing of orphan and non-orphan adolescents.

This study examined early trajectories for academic and social skills among four groups of rural, preschool-attending, children in the Guangdong province of China: Village children who remained in a rural village and lived with both parents, Migrant children who migrated with their work-seeking parents to live in an urban area, Partially-left-behind children who lived with one parent in a rural village while the other parent migrated to the city for work, and Completely-left-behind children who stayed in a rural village with relatives while both parents migrated to the city for work.

This study examined the long-term effects of the Head Start early childhood program on foster children's developmental outcomes from ages 3–4 to 8–9.

This chapter describes a youth-centered approach to transition planning for this vulnerable population and highlights essential elements to consider during the process such as disability, mental health, trauma, resilience, self-determination, culture, and how trauma impacts mental health.

Drawing on a large‐scale online survey of looked after children's subjective well‐being, this paper demonstrates that a significant number of children and young people (age 4–18 years) did not fully understand the reasons for their entry to care.

This annual publication presents information on those who left care during the previous financial year, as well as the circumstances of those who have left care at the time of their nineteenth birthday.

More than 12,000 children in care are not living with at least one of their siblings, according to this article from BBC News.

This episode of the Child Welfare Information Gateway podcast is part of a series focusing on Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (CBCAP) grantees.

In this joint policy note, Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict and Human Rights Watch highlight the increasingly worrying trend of military detention of children affected by armed conflict, a trend documented in at least 15 countries affected by armed conflict.

This mid-level online course is designed to help participants' develop knowledge of good practice in child protection, with a particular focus on conflict settings.

This report reviews information on looked-after children in the UK at both national and local authority levels for the financial year 2018 to 2019.

This training is designed to increase participants' knowledge of the Minimum Standards for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action (CPMS).

This study examined child protective service (CPS) involvement of children surviving the child maltreatment fatality (CMF) of a sibling as well as predictors of subsequent CPS reports.

The present study uses system dynamics modeling to inform decision-making by testing policies for scaling the Family Unification Program (FUP), a U.S. federal initiative connecting inadequately housed families involved in child welfare with long-term rental subsidies to avoid foster placement.

This study synthetic cohort life tables and data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System to generate the first cumulative prevalence estimates of termination of parental rights.

To investigate the impact of childhood deprivation on the adult brain and the extent to which structural changes underpin these effects, the authors of this study from PNAS utilized MRI data collected from young adults who were exposed to severe deprivation in early childhood in the Romanian orphanages of the Ceaușescu era and then, subsequently adopted by UK families.

The objective of this work is to determine the factors associated with deciding to address family reunification from residential care (RC).

The objective of this study was to provide data on the effects of bullying suffered at school on different cognitive and affective SWB measures (OLS, PWI and OHS) of early and late adolescents in residential care.

This article uses Official Information Act and publicly available data to examine recent trends of children in contact with the Aotearoa New Zealand child protection system. It discusses these trends with reference to child protection policy reforms, and an inequalities perspective.