This statement by a group of 45 member states during the 48th UN Statistical Convention addressed the UN Statistical Commission on the importance of monitoring SDG progress among all children, including children who live outside of households.

Pour comprendre la raison pour laquelle les orphelinats continuent de se développer en Haïti et la façon dont ils affectent les enfants, Lumos a mené une enquête sur les modes de financement et les ramifications de la vie en orphelinat sur les enfants élevés entre leurs murs.

In this report, Lumos investigates the funding patterns of Haitian orphanages as well as the ramifications of orphanage life for the children raised within them to better understand why orphanages continue to flourish in the country. 

This article discusses the use of standard household surveys as measurement of progress toward development goals, which by design omit the most marginalized groups from data collection.

This report is aimed at synthesizing key concepts and standards regarding the protection of the rights of migrant children and adolescents in the Northern Triangle of Central America. 

Produced by UNICEF, this article provides an estimate of the number of children living in institutional care worldwide. 

This report provides an evaluation of the Keeping and Finding Families Project, a pilot foster care project in Tajikistan. 

This article describes and evaluates a model utilizing Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) to minimize the impact of early trauma for infants and toddlers removed from parental care. 

In this article, researchers summarize what is known about engaging fathers in parenting programs, then argue that programs are most effective when coparenting is the focus early in family formation.

The aim of this study was to compare outcomes for children living in three different types of care in Chile: biological parental care, residential care, and foster care. 

“Is every child counted” provides a status report on the data availability of child related SDG indicators showing that sufficient data is available only for half of those; the report also identifies priorities for enhancing the collection, analysis and use of data for children.

The Africa’s Agenda for Children, to be adopted by the Committee, presents measurable goals and priority areas  to which the African Union and its Member States commit themselves for the coming 25 years.  

The 2017 KIDS COUNT Data Book urges policymakers not to back away from targeted investments that help U.S. children become healthier, more likely to complete high school and better positioned to contribute to the nation’s economy as adults.

The study explored the health challenges faced by orphans living with extended families in South Africa. 

This systematic review draws from previous research to provide a broad picture of the challenges of adolescent females in child-headed households in South Africa. 

This article analyzes the responses of Central American and Mexican migrant children to one interview question regarding how to help youth like themselves, and identifies several implied “no-win” situations as potential reasons for the migration decisions of unaccompanied children.

The Global Social Service Workforce Alliance hosted its 4th Annual Symposium on May 24, 2017, in Washington, DC, and also via live webcast on the topic of case management and the social service workforce.

Tophaz Special Home, a 220-bed state institution for the disabled in Hungary, is to be closed following a shock report by a human rights group.

This study implemented a 3-month yoga program with orphan adolescents in Bangalore, India and evaulated the impact of the program on adolescent executive functioning. 

Organizations working to protect the health and wellbeing of children in emergencies are moving away from traditional paper-based systems towards more sophisticated and innovative digitally-based systems. Formative research was conducted to identify the state of the current evidence base on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) for child protection case management in emergencies (CPCME). 

This qualitative study explores eighteen institutionalized male adolescent Colombian social orphans' perspectives on the nature of their relationships with non-parental adults in their immediate environment.

This independent report, from University of Bristol and Durham University, draws on information from the largest randomised controlled trial of a service for children affected by sexual abuse.

Transitioning to Family Care for Children: A Guidance Manual aims to provide practical guidance and tools for churches, faith-based organizations, donors, and others who are transitioning care for children away from residential care to care within families.

The Transitioning to Family Care for Children Tool Kit is an online resource developed by the Faith to Action Initiative for churches, faith-based organizations, donors, and others seeking to transition their care and support of children away from a residential model of care (e.g., institutions, orphanages, children’s homes, group homes) to care within families. 

The Bridges Transitions Framework (Bridges, 2009) implemented in this study shows some promise in smoothing foster youth reactions to change. The framework was adapted to help older youth, foster parents, and social workers look beyond the concrete goals of independent living (e.g., housing, employment). It is process-oriented and attends to the psycho-social reactions and emotions that youth experience during times of significant change. 

This chapter examines stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions in the US. 

A case study approach was utilized to investigate individually and as a group, the aging out process of nine sexual minority adults, specifically, lesbian, gay and transgender (LGT) adults who transitioned from a Mid-Atlantic foster care system to adulthood.

This report describes the findings from a research study on the protection of children fleeing from the Syria conflict and traveling to Europe. 

Every child deserves a childhood of love, care and protection so they can develop to their full potential, but this is not the experience for at least a quarter of our children worldwide. This new report – the first in an annual series – takes a hard look at the events that rob children of their childhoods.

Every child deserves a childhood of love, care and protection so they can develop to their full potential, but this is not the experience for at least a quarter of our children worldwide. This new report – the first in an annual series – takes a hard look at the events that rob children of their childhoods.

This study describes and evaluates Camp To Belong, a multi-site program designed to provide short-term reunification to separated sibling groups through a week-long summer camp experience in the US. 

This new toolkit provides practical tools and resources to assist law enforcement agencies in building or enhancing effective operational responses to children exposed to violence (with or without a mental health partner). This toolkit contains tools targeted to police leaders and frontline officers.

This report summarizes evidence on six perceptions associated with cash transfer programming, using eight rigorous evaluations conducted on large-scale government unconditional cash transfers in sub-Saharan Africa, under the Transfer Project. 

The manual is both a roadmap for policy-makers and a daily guide for professionals working with children on the move – from humanitarian workers and border staff to social workers responsible for creating individualised plans that put children first.

This case study is part of a UNICEF global initiative, undertaken in collaboration with Global Affairs Canada, to document national child protection frameworks in five core programming countries; this report describes the activities and findings from UNICEF's exploration of Ghana's national child protection system. 

This study reports on the findings from a randomized control trial of a 10-week home visiting program, Promoting First Relationships® (Kelly, Sandoval, Zuckerman, & Buehlman, 2008), for a subsample of 43 reunified birth parents of toddlers that were part of the larger trial.

In this episode of the Think Orphan podcast, Philip Darke speaks with Dr. Delia Pop about the impact of institutional care, deinstitutionalisation (DI), cross-cultural application, and how faith communities, missionaries, volunteers, and donors can work toward better outcomes for children outside family care. 

This case study describes the adaptation of a community-based case management model to a national case management framework for highly vulnerable children in Zimbabwe. 

Produced by MenCare, the second State of the World's Fathers report provides a worldwide analysis of fatherhood and caregiving. Drawing on global research and statistics, this report serves as an advocacy tool for MenCare's global fatherhood campaign and proposes a call to action for policy and practice around the world. 

From preventative strategies to transitional and permanency solutions, the Mockingbird Family Model (MFM) offers a comprehensive support structure for families and children across the continuum of the child welfare experience. This resource briefly describes the MFM and its current activities. 

This study aimed to describe caregivers' understandings of, and responses to, unsettled infant behaviours in Vietnam and their family caregiving contexts.

This report is based on Human Rights Watch visits to five state-run orphanages and ten state-run schools, including six special schools and four mainstream schools, and interviews with 173 people, in eight cities in Armenia. 

This report provides a comprehensive and critical analysis of the Indian government’s efforts to rescue and reintegrate children trafficked for their labor.

Published in Scientific American in 2013, this article describes the findings from the first-ever randomized trial comparing the emotional and physical well-being of institutionalized children with those placed in foster care in Bucharest, Romania. 

The purpose of this Global Advocacy Toolkit is to provide advocates with a common set of tools and messages with which to bring about greater political and programmatic priority for strengthening the social service workforce. 

This statistical first release provides data on secure children’s homes (SCHs) in England and Wales.

This briefing highlights how prohibition of all corporal punishment of children in Africa is an essential step towards fulfilling the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development - particularly target 16.2 to end all violence against children, and targets related to health, well-being and quality education - and Africa’s Agenda for Children 2040: Fostering an Africa Fit for Children.

This report examines current policy framework and practices in five countries, namely Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia and the Republic of Nauru.

This paper describes promising programs and strategies designed to prevent physical punishment by parents for each of three levels of intervention − indicated, selective, and universal − and summarizes the existing evidence base of each. 

This article describes a study in which researchers explored the emotional and psychological health of China's left-behind children (LBC) by identifiying the differences in levels of happiness, self-esteem and anxiety between LBC and non-LBC. 

This article describes the findings from a longitudinal study investigating the coping styles of youth living in foster care with a history of maltreatment. 

This article reviews the literature on the factors associated with mothers who use substances losing care of their children.

This article describes a research study investigating child safety in biological and non-biological kinship care placements. 

Edited by Tuhinul Islam and Leon Fulcher, Residential Child and Youth Care in a Developing World: European Perspectives is the second volume in a series of four, bringing together contributions from local practitioners, educators and researchers throughout Europe on their countries' residential child and youth care traditions, policies and practices, as well as knowledge about children's needs, rights and personal upbringing there.

Bringing together cross-disciplinary expertise, this volume addresses a vast range of topics related to child abuse and neglect in Uganda.  

GoPhilanthropic Foundation makes the case for more informed philanthropy, volunteering and travel by discussing the reasons children enter residential care and the impact they have on children. 

The objectives of this analysis are to examine the whether gendered and parental attitudes of caregivers in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) were associated with their adolescent girls’ experiences of violence and girls’ attitudes towards intimate partner violence (IPV). 

This randomized control trial study used an intent-to-treat approach to examine whether a referral to a family group conference (FGC) was associated with re-referrals, substantiated re-referrals, or out-of-home placements among child welfare-involved families receiving in-home services. 

This literature review summarizes the research on children who live apart from their parents and identifies gaps in knowledge regarding this vulnerable population. This literature review was developed as a step toward designing the National Survey of Children in Nonparental Care, a nationally representative telephone survey of adults caring for these children.

This article examines the stories that foster care youth tell to legislatures, courts, policymakers, and the public to influence policy decisions.

This dissertation by Regina Lawson, submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Capella University, utilizes a case study approach to investigate the aging out process of nine sexual minority adults, specifically, lesbian, gay and transgender (LGT) adults who transitioned from a Mid-Atlantic foster care system to adulthood. It also explores the extent to which this group of youth, and LGBT youth, perceive their sexual orientation or gender identification impacts their experience of aging out of foster care into adulthood.

This study describes and evaluates Camp To Belong, a multi-site program designed to provide short-term reunification to separated sibling groups through a week-long summer camp experience. Using a pre-test post-test survey design, this paper examines changes in youth ratings of sibling conflict and sibling support across camps located in six geographically distinct regions of the United States. 

The present study analyzes the risk factors responsible for the exposure of migrant and refugee children to physical, psychological, and sexual violence and exploitation in Greece in the context of the ongoing migrant humanitarian crisis. It documents sexual and physical abuse of children inside migrant camps and reports new information about the commercial sexual exploitation of migrant children in the main cities of Greece. This research also explores the existing gaps and challenges in intervention efforts that contribute to victimization of migrant children. 

This case study describes the community-based child protection programme implemented between 2015 and 2016 with Burundian girls, boys and adults in Mahama refugee camp in Rwanda.

This document contains the minimum standards for placing children in foster care in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Minimum Standards includes service specifications, instruments for monitoring compliance with standards, and guidelines for use of the minimum standards for day centers for children with developmental disabilities. 

The State of the Ugandan Child: An Analytical Overview focuses on four thematic areas, namely: health and nutrition, education, child protection and child participation; with emphasis placed on the girl child. 

This paper presents the process and the outcomes of a participatory action research project with a group of unaccompanied asylum seeking young people living in foster care. 

This Resolution Booklet includes the motions and resolution adopted by the European Youth Parliament at its 2017 meeting.

Among the millions of children on the move worldwide, many – including hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children and adolescents – undertake dangerous journeys. This report shows how the lack of safe and legal pathways for refugee and migrant children feeds a booming market for human smuggling and puts them at risk of violence, abuse and exploitation. Building on recent UNICEF policy proposals, it sets out ways that governments can better protect these vulnerable children.

This album is a compilation of information collected from children and young people during the Kinship Care research in Zanzibar by Save the Children.

An exploratory case study design was used to identify the needs of kinship caregivers in northern British Columbia (BC). 

This report assesses the practice of kinship care within four research countries in the West and Central African region (Sierra Leone, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Niger), reflecting upon the widespread use of kinship care.

The objective of the present research study is to increase knowledge about kinship care in DRC and provide recommendations for programming to increase the care and protection of children.  

This participatory research confirms that kinship care is widely practiced in many Kenyan communities as noted through the participatory engagement with communities in Busia County. 

Save the Children extended Kinship Care research begun in West Central Africa in 2012 across East Africa in 2014, and this paper presents the findings for Zanzibar. 

This Album on Kinship Care is a compilation of the works of Syrian refugee children in kinship care and their adult caregivers who took part in the participatory action research undertaken by Save the Children and the Information and Research Center – King Hussein Foundation in Jordan in 2014 in the Zaatari Camp and in the city of Amman.

This Album on Kinship Care is a compilation of the works of Syrian refugee children in kinship care and their adult caregivers who took part in the participatory action research undertaken by Save the Children and the Information and Research Center – King Hussein Foundation in Jordan in 2014 in the Zaatari Camp and in the city of Amman.

This Regional Kinship Care Album is a compilation of the 3 country albums (Kenya, Ethiopia and Zanzibar) bringing together information from children, young people and adults collected during the Kinship Care Research that took place in each of the three countries from late 2013 through 2014. 

Our Home, Safe Home captures the moving stories of girls who have lived or are still living in the Save the Children supported Safe Home at Daulatdia, Bangladesh. 

This album presents viewpoints of children and young people, who have been engaged in this participatory research on kinship care - as advisors, researchers, respondents and documenters during the months of June to December, 2014.

Hace un llamado urgente para acabar con la institucionalización de niños y niñas en la región

Families including a parent or parents with a learning disability can often have complex needs linked to issues such as poverty and mental health, and are known to be overrepresented in child care proceedings. Previous local project work with 12 families had demonstrated the potential of providing intensive support to parents with a learning disability, as well as others without a learning disability who were vulnerable for other reasons. A follow-up project 16 years later sought to re-engage with those families in order to explore their outcomes.

The objective of this study was to undertake the first systematic census of background, care type and placement stability characteristics of young people living in the out-of-home care sector in Australia. 

This presentation features:

This study focuses on the plans, goals, and concerns of foster care youth prior to leaving care. Participants were 179 pre-emancipated youth between the ages of 17 and 20 years old (M = 17.82, SD = 0.79) from a large metropolitan area in Southern California.

The aim of this study is to show young people's feelings about their experiences with participation in decision-making in public care in the United States.

This study seeks to contribute to the literature on child welfare and parental drug use in the United States by answering several research questions.

This paper analyzes empirical differences in adoption services of public and private agencies in the United States.

This study investigates the intergenerational impact of conflict on the educational and health outcomes of children born years after the conflict in Cambodia ended by exploiting geographical variation in the intensity of the genocide that occurred during the Khmer Rouge (KR) regime in Cambodia.

The aim of this guide is to enable practitioners to support children affected by a family member’s offending within a whole family approach.

The purpose of this article is to provide a summary of the published research addressing the challenges and strengths of Latino grandparents raising grandchildren in the United States. 

This study tested the capacity to perceive visual expressions of emotion, and to use those expressions as guides to social decisions, in three groups of 8- to 10-year-old Romanian children: children abandoned to institutions then randomly assigned to remain in ‘care as usual’ (institutional care); children abandoned to institutions then randomly assigned to a foster care intervention; and community children who had never been institutionalized. 

The goal of this study is to describe the population treated in therapeutic residential care (TRC) facilities in Spain and the therapeutic coverage given. 

This chapter aims to (1) review results of recent studies, conducted in different countries, on the subjective well-being of children; (2) provide an overview of residential care in Brazil; (3) discuss recent research findings from the Research Group on Community Psychology (GPPC) of well-being in children in southern Brazil; and (4) discuss the specifics of the research context with children on state protection.

Edited by Tuhinul Islam and Leon Fulcher,  Residential Child and Youth Care in a Developing World: Global Perspectives  is the first volume of a series of four, bringing together contributions from local practitioners, educators and researchers across all regions on their countries' residential child and youth care traditions, policies and practices, as well as knowledge about children's needs, rights and personal upbringing there.

This study by UNICEF sought to identify key determinants of vulnerability among children –including those affected by HIV and AIDS – that can contribute to developing an improved global measure of vulnerable children in the context of HIV and AIDS. Data from the most recent available household surveys at the time of analysis was used from 11 countries – Cambodia, Central African Republic, Haiti, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Swaziland, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe – were pooled.

Family distraught at losing contact with son, now living 8,000 miles away in US after adopters told he was abandoned

This article specifically focuses on kafalah as an alternative care option for children deprived of a family environment in comparison with other forms of alternative childcare.