This field guide, produced by Apolitical in partnership with Hope and Homes for Children, is designed to help public servants understand the issue of children in care. It covers the following learning objectives: (1) Understand why experts say institutional care is harmful to children, (2) Learn about deinstitutionalisation and new approaches to replace institutions and prevent family separation, and (3) Learn about interventions that have improved outcomes for kids who do experience care.

In its resolution 73/155, the General Assembly requested the Secretary-General to submit to it at its seventy-fourth session a comprehensive report on the rights of the child containing information on the status of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, with a focus on children without parental care.

The International Forum for Volunteering in Development (Forum) has developed The Global Standard for Volunteering for Development (the Global Standard) to help organisations understand and deliver Responsible and Impactful Volunteering, and to encourage learning and continuous improvement in development projects involving volunteers. The Global Standard offers key actions and indicators for each of the four themes - Designing and Delivering Projects, Duty of Care, Managing Volunteers, and Measuring Impact - including several indicators related to orphanage volunteering.

Building on 10 qualitative interviews with parents of children in Norwegian Child Welfare Services, this paper discusses parents' views on collaboration between children and child welfare professionals.

This report describes lessons learned from a centerpiece of Home Away From Home: coaching, technical assistance, and data analysis activities aimed to improve the recruitment, training, support and retention of foster homes and build kinship caregiving capacity.

This dossier (written in Italian) contains information relating to the quarter October-December 2016 of the "Children Come First: Intervention at the border" project, which aimed to strengthen the system of protection and reception of migrant children arriving in Italy, whether they are separated or accompanied by their parents.

This House of Commons Library briefing paper considers what help is available for grandparents and other family and friends carers (also known as kinship carers) looking after children where their parents are not in a position to do so.

This study explored the construct of mothering children during family‐centered substance use treatment using a transcendental phenomenological approach.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the recommending of contact in special guardianship cases is currently working, by holding focus groups with social workers and special guardians.

This chapter examines how the competing goals of child welfare systems work with the developments in constitutional rights.

This issue paper explores the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) children and young people in alternative care settings and highlights some promising practices.

On 18 October 2019, the UK Government updated its guidance on gap years and volunteering overseas to include an advisory on volunteering at and visiting orphanages abroad. 

This article examines the family reintegration process for those in care in Portugal and Brazil.

This exploratory study gathered perspectives from legal professionals regarding the challenges faced by youths in out of home care and their families and necessary supports to promote successful reunification.

Child protection-involved children experience disproportionately high criminal justice system contact, yet little is known about the circumstances in which such children offend. This study sought to identify the contexts in which this group of children offend and factors associated with children being charged in each context.

The aim of this training package is to increase case management supervisors’ confidence, capacity and support to caseworkers to provide safe, ethical and competent case management services to vulnerable children and their families.

In this blog post for the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance, part of a series celebrating Social Service Workforce Week, Colleen Fitzgerald writes about the need to support the social service workforce and to promote the well-being of caseworkers and social workers.

This article explores how children living in foster care create senses of belonging across diverse family relationships. It draws on video diaries made by 11 Danish children living in foster care.

The authors of this study systematically compared parenting interventions offered in 12 maternal substance use treatment programs in one Canadian province with those described in the research literature.

The present study is the largest and most rigorous study to date on the effects of being appointed a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) on permanency outcomes of children in foster care.

The aim of this study was to assess the feasibility and acceptability of a home‐based intervention—Amagugu Asakhula—to promote nurturing interactions and healthy behaviours with the caregivers of preschool children.

This study aims to explore the experiences of carers of children with cerebral palsy living in rural areas of Ghana who have received no rehabilitation services.

The purpose of this report is to: reveal how much Australian governments spend every year because children and young people have reached crisis point and highlight the opportunity of earlier and wiser investment in children to improve the lives of young Australians while reducing pressure on government budgets.

The Family Matters report sets out what governments are doing to turn the tide on over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care in Australia and the outcomes for children and their families.

The aim of this article is to review adult adoptees’ demands for post-adoption resources, applicants’ characteristics and resources offered to them.

This book prepares future child welfare professionals to tackle the complex and challenging work associated with responding to child maltreatment.

The National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation (QIC-AG) is a five-year project working with eight sites that will implement evidence-based interventions or develop and test promising practices which if proven effective can be replicated or adapted in other child welfare jurisdictions. This webinar presented learning from the project related to staffing and staff support, recruitment and retention, cost/sustainability, stakeholder collaboration, and logistics.

This article discusses efforts in 3 countries to develop simple, valid tools to quantify and classify economic vulnerability status.

In this report, which has been prepared to inform planning in the USAID-funded ASPIRES project, the authors present a review of some of the existing tools used to assess vulnerability to either separation or negative child well-being outcomes with attention to economic security for the purposes of targeting households for program participation and matching them to appropriate interventions.

The primary goal of the ASPIRES project is to support gender-sensitive programming, research and learning to improve the economic security of highly vulnerable individuals, families and children.

This guidance note was developed by ReThink Orphanages Australia and the ACFID Child Rights Community of Practice to assist charities with overseas activities involving residential care for children in their efforts to comply with the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission (ACNC)’s External Conduct Standards (ECS).

Objectives of this study were twofold. To identify combinations of adverse childhood experiences that are associated with out of home placement (OOHP)—based on both duration of OOHP and change in actual placement during each time point, among welfare involved youth. The second objective was to understand long-term negative outcomes during adolescence that are associated with greater placement instability.

This article highlights the experiences of staff who responded to the needs of individuals, families, and communities following Hurricane Michael in Florida, USA in October 2018 and is focused on the perspectives of individuals working in the field.

The current study examines social networks and utilization of social support among young people ages 18 to 25 from one southeastern state in the US who had aged out of care or were in extended foster care.

The objective of these Minimum Standards is to provide clarity on what constitutes effective and appropriate gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and response in emergencies by offering concrete actions that can be applied across various emergency contexts.

This brief synthesizes the key results of "What Works" studies as well as other key findings from contemporaneous research efforts published since 2015. It aims to provide an up-to-date resource for practitioners, policymakers and researchers on the state of evidence on violence against women and girls (VAWG) in conflict and humanitarian settings.

The purpose of this study was to use record linkage of birth cohort and administrative data to study educational outcomes of children who are looked-after (in public care) and in need (social services involvement), and examine the role of early life factors.

In this article, the experience, difficulties and perspectives of the first health training program for foster child care facilities personnel in Argentina are presented.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the health status and anthropometrical development of adopted children from Ethiopia living in southern Spain.

This qualitative research study explored the psycho-educational and social factors that contribute to anxiety in orphaned adolescent students in a secondary school in Welkom, Free State, South Africa.

This study analyzes the influence of children’s preadoptive history and adoptive parents’ characteristics on the psychosocial adjustment of nationally and internationally adopted children in Germany.

To help increase the college preparation of local foster youth in a Midwestern city in the US, the authors developed a working group comprised of foster youth nominated by agency staff, staff from a university research center that sponsored and coordinated the program, local community leaders who work with foster youth, and city government representatives.

The Bounce Project is a pilot youth-leadership mental health training programme co-designed with young people who have experienced out-of-home-care (OoHC). In this study, the authors evaluated the Bounce Project from the young people’s perspectives to explore the acceptability, successes and limitations of the training to promote the participant’s mental health and their contribution to system level change.

This chapter charts the application and impact of "crimmigration control" measures on unaccompanied minors, a particularly vulnerable category of migrants.

The authors of this study use life course theory to explore the role of agency in shaping the educational pathways of 18 Irish adults (aged 24–36 years) with care experience.

The Partner Due Diligence Assessment Tool was developed specifically for charities seeking to partner with overseas organisations who provide residential care services for children. It is designed to help you determine whether your partner or prospective partner is operating in accordance with standard notions of good practice and international norms.

This study sought to analyze the executive functions of a sample of 43 Spanish foster children aged between five and nine years (M = 7.51, SD = 1.29), using a caregiver-reported questionnaire.

This study aimed to identify the factors that affect the incidence rate of neglected children in Indonesia by considering the household effect.

This article draws on national data and quantitative data from a study of ‘City’, a local authority in the north of England with a large Family Group Conference service.

The purpose of this presentation is to summarize findings from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) - the only randomized, controlled trial of foster care (FC) as an alternative to institutional care ever conducted - regarding psychopathology and competence through age 12 years.

This paper explores the usefulness of undertaking a longitudinal analysis of these data at local authority level to determine the care pathways for children entering care, differentiating by age at entry.

This report from the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children outlines the impacts of violence against children and proposes recommendations for safeguarding the right of every child to protection from all forms of violence.

This country care review highlights the care-related Concluding Observations from the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

This general comment from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child addresses children's rights in the child justice system. The general comment notes several concerns and recommendations regarding the deprivation of liberty of children, including the consideration of the child's best interests, the need to promote successful reintegration of children, and the recognition of the harm caused by deprivation of liberty.

Based on semi-structured interviews with parents involved with child protective services (CPS), this study explored these parents’ self-identified parenting strengths in light of their family-of-origin experiences.

This study addressed foundling and abandoned children in the Palestinian society as a multi-dimensional phenomenon.

In this article, the authors analyse how interventions of the State may undermine, rather than activate, the caring capabilities of vulnerable families across the life course, drawing on examples from Australia, England and the USA.

This article considers the application of Communities of Practice theory to understand transition into, through and out of care, arguing that a sense of belonging and identity emerges from participation in supportive communities. The authors consider the influence of community on looked after children and care leavers’ sense of identity, engagement and well-being in transition.

Part of the 'Permanently Progressing? Building secure futures for children in Scotland' study, this briefing draws upon the voices of children, carers and adoptive parents in Scotland, offering perspectives on kinship care, foster care and adoption.

The current study employed thematic analysis to explore Massachusetts foster youth’s academic challenges and supports through interviews with teachers, foster parents, former foster youth, and three individuals who were both teachers and foster parents.

This report compiles presentations and notes from the Accelerating Strategies for Practical Innovation & Research in Economic Strengthening (ASPIRES) Family Care Uganda Learning Event, Economic Strengthening and Keeping Children in Family Care, held May 29-30, 2018.

The present report summarizes the detailed findings of the global study on children deprived of liberty, the first scientific attempt, on the basis of global data, to comprehend the magnitude of the situation of children deprived of liberty, its possible justifications and root causes, as well as conditions of detention and their harmful impact on the health and development of children.

This report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children highlights action taken at national and regional levels towards realizing the right of every child to protection from violence.

In this webinar, 4Children shared an overview of the development and content of the case management package.

This paper examines whether children and main caregivers of overseas migrant fathers have fewer or more mental health symptoms compared to those of non-migrant fathers.

This thesis is concerned with the overrepresentation of black and minority ethnic (BME) children and looked after children, in the youth justice system in general and the secure state in particular, in England and Wales.

This article examines place and privacy as two key resources for producing kinship through an analysis of exceptional legal practices in Spain that overdetermine international adoptees’ Spanishness.

This qualitative study explored perspectives from young people with experience of OoHC in Melbourne, Australia regarding the promotion of mental health in OoHC. The study informed the subsequent development of a system-level intervention to support workers and carers in OoHC and evaluation of its implementation, the Ripple study.

The present study analyzes the process of deinstitutionalization in Romania, as a transition stage in the life of youngsters who leave care system after turning eighteen.

This chapter from 'Addressing Multicultural Needs in School Guidance and Counseling' focuses on the psychological and social issues that orphans and other vulnerable children experience when their parents are no longer alive.

The present study examines the influences of migration on the health of left-behind children in China and the mediating channels, using data from a new nationally representative survey.

This study examined the mediating effects of loneliness in the relationship between social anxiety and life satisfaction. Four hundred and forty two left‐behind children in rural China, who completed the Social Anxiety Subscale, UCLA Loneliness Scale, and Satisfaction with Life Scale, participated in the study.

This article presents a case study of a 15-year-old boy whose severe difficulties were understood and formulated in terms of ‘attachment problems’ for many years.

The current study compares risk factors and sleep in a sample of foster care alumni and low-income young adults aged 18–24.

This webinar offers foundational information related to the intersection of culture, the migration journey, trauma and assessment.

The National Child Traumatic Network (NCTN) has published a list of measures that front line professionals can use to assess the exposure to trauma among migrant and refugee families and children.

The webinar recording provides a basic overview of the intersection of early childhood development (0-5), attachment and trauma in young migrant children.

This documentary from CBS News takes viewers inside the real-life challenges facing migrant families split apart by the Trump administration's "Zero Tolerance" policy.

This report examines home visiting models and curricula, state- and federal-level policies related to early care and education and home visiting, funding streams to support early care and education and home visiting, and the perspectives of home-based child care (HBCC) providers and parents in order to explore the potential for scaling up this model of professional development for HBCC providers in the United States.

In this article, the stories of children left-behind by parental migration in Central America and Mexico are conveyed in their own words detailing how vulnerable they felt when abandoned, confused, and at times, rejected after finally connecting with their long-lost families.

The aim of this article is to develop proposals for the organization of a legal and regulatory framework in Russia, in accordance with the social and psychological needs of guardianship families and to identify the possibilities of the Ombudsman for the Rights of the Child to protect the rights of minors raised in guardianship families.

This study aimed to assess differences in the level of post-traumatic symptoms reported by those who experienced commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) during adolescence and those who did not.

This book outlines narrative and dramatic approaches to improve vulnerable family relationships. It provides a model which offers new ways for parents to practise communicating with their children and develop positive relationships.

This report draws on interviews the authors conducted with 19 child welfare leaders in eight jurisdictions to highlight how jurisdictions are using existing funding sources to serve this population and examine the funding challenges they continue to face.

The objective of this study was to determine if Spanish foster care children and Spanish non-foster children differ on sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT), ADHD-inattention (IN), ADHD-hyperactivity/impulsivity (HI), oppositional defiant disorder (ODD), limited prosocial emotions (LPE), anxiety, depression, social and academic impairment measures and if the duration of foster care predicts a reduction in symptom and impairment differences between foster and non-foster care children.

This presentation was given at the National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect in Washington, DC in April 2019. The presentation outlines data on the prevalence of parental substance abuse as a contributing factor for child removal in the US and highlights practices that work for families with substance abuse disorders.

Decisions in the child protection context take place in a complex environment influenced by individual decision-makers, institutional resources and practices, demographic inequalities, and family responses. This report describes some of these factors as reported by practitioners in the child protection context in Aotearoa New Zealand, providing an insight into the experiences and perceptions of front-line practitioners.

The purpose of this article is to provide an introduction to social workers of child welfare reform by class action lawsuits and subsequent consent decrees in the United States.

This report explores the experiences of 64 Indigenous parents who have had engagement with the child welfare system in Canada. Their stories and expertise provide a wealth of knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of current prevention-based efforts and programs. Their experiences demonstrate that, despite the Ministry for Children and Family Development’s (MCFD) emphasis on improving prevention-based services for Indigenous families, long-standing apprehension-focused practices continue to permeate the system.

The objective of this paper is to examine the situation of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in existing alternative care systems and explore the treatment of OVC in these systems.

This article from the Vulnerable Children and Youth Studies journal presents lessons learned from a RISE Learning Network learning project focused on monitoring (M&E Learning Project) and aimed to generate understanding of approaches and tools that could effectively monitor children and families’ reintegration outcomes. The mid- and end-term reviews of the M&E Learning Project have captured lessons learned on how practitioners can approach monitoring of reintegration to mainstream it into their programme cycle.

This video highlights the work of JJ's Children's Home (funded by a US-based organization called Heaven's Family) in their journey to transition from institutional care of children to family-based care, with the support of SFAC and ACCIR's Kinnected program, reintegrating children into their families or placing them in kinship and foster care.

This report is a review of the social service workforce in eight countries: Djibouti, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan and Tunisia.

This chapter highlights the key assumptions underlying Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) and illustrates them with regard to the practice of RCTs in the realm of child and adolescent development.

The purpose of this commentary is to reflect on the utility and possible application of the suggestions and study designs in this special issue to real‐life intervention studies in dynamic context settings.

This Practitioner Brief from the the Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4Children) project presents key learning and recommendations from the Keeping Children in Healthy and Protective Families (KCHPF) project in Uganda, which supported the reintegration of children living in residential care back into family care through the provision of a household-based parenting program, individualized case management support and a reunification cash grant aimed at strengthening the reintegration process.