This study explores the challenges faced by young people with disabilities in Japan after leaving residential care, finding they often struggle with adapting to new environments, managing their health, and accessing consistent support. It highlights the need for more structured, long-term support systems to help them successfully transition to independent living.

This review examines what happens to unaccompanied and separated children who go missing after arriving in Greece, a major entry point for asylum seekers, and finds that most likely continue their journeys irregularly or remain unofficially in the country. However, due to limited and mostly anecdotal evidence, it highlights a major gap in reliable data and calls for urgent research and policy action to better protect these children.

This review examines research on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected older youth with foster care experience in the United States, finding that most studies were descriptive and highlighted major disruptions in areas like housing, education, employment, mental health, and relationships. It shows that certain groups—such as youth of color, LGBTQ youth, and females—were especially impacted, and calls for stronger support systems and policies to better protect foster youth in future crises.

This review examines research on how the COVID-19 pandemic affected older youth with foster care experience in the United States, finding that most studies were descriptive and highlighted major disruptions in areas like housing, education, employment, mental health, and relationships. It shows that certain groups—such as youth of color, LGBTQ youth, and females—were especially impacted, and calls for stronger support systems and policies to better protect foster youth in future crises.

This study explores the challenges faced by at-risk Arab young adults in Israel as they transition out of care, highlighting how minority status and cultural context shape their experiences. Findings reveal cycles of family risk, identity struggles, and feelings of loss and exclusion, underscoring the need for culturally responsive, gender-sensitive, and inclusive support programs for care leavers.

This article explores the complex experiences of adopted people who identify as LGBTQ+, highlighting the intersectionality of their identities and the impact on their mental health, well-being, and identity development. It emphasizes the need for inclusive and culturally competent support systems, policies, and research to promote resilience and affirm their diverse identities.

This study examines child safeguarding practices in Catholic dioceses in Kenya, finding that although safeguarding policies and support systems exist, only a small proportion of church personnel have received formal training. The research highlights ongoing risks—including sexual abuse, child labour, neglect, and early marriage—and identifies resource constraints, cultural resistance, and institutional barriers as key challenges to effective safeguarding.

This meta-review synthesizes research on educational outcomes for children and adolescents in foster care, confirming that they often face poorer academic results and lower graduation rates. It identifies five key factors that support educational success—placement and school stability, interagency collaboration, supportive relationships with adults, academic and emotional support, and school practices that promote autonomy and participation.

This scoping review examines trauma-informed parent training programs in child welfare, identifying 24 studies—mostly focused on foster or resource parents—with a few addressing birth parents’ own trauma. The review finds that these programs, often delivered in group formats, lead to meaningful improvements for both children and parents and highlight the growing promise of trauma-informed approaches in supporting families involved in child welfare.

This webinar, held by the Care Leaders Council, is a space for international exchange among people with lived experience in care, aimed at analyzing regulatory progress, best practices, and challenges in the transition to independent living, strengthening global networks and promoting more effective public policies.

This report summarizes a regional consultation convened by UNICEF and Pan American Health Organization to strengthen efforts to prevent and address violence against children in Latin America and the Caribbean. It highlights existing evidence, policy frameworks, and good practices from participating countries to support more coordinated and effective responses to violence against children.

This study compares the role of advocacy coalitions in forming child protection policies in the United States and Indonesia, looking at the problems that arise from their different political and governance systems. The findings show how important it is to improve inter-agency collaboration, strengthen local governance, and get more political support to fix the problems with child protection services

This report explores relational practice in out-of-home care in New South Wales, Australia, highlighting the importance of strong, trusting relationships between children, families, carers, and practitioners for children’s healing and well-being. It finds that although practitioners value relational work, system pressures—such as administrative requirements and compliance demands—often limit their ability to prioritize meaningful human connections.

The 2025 State of Care report by VOYCE – Whakarongo Mai shares the experiences of children and young people in care in New Zealand, focusing on whether they feel truly cared for rather than just how the system performs. Co-written with care-experienced youth, the report amplifies their voices to highlight what is working, what needs to change, and their hopes and recommendations for improving the care system.

This study surveys residential care practitioners in Queensland, Australia to examine their training, knowledge, and perceptions related to child sexual exploitation (CSE) among young people in residential care. It finds significant gaps in both pre-service and in-service training and highlights practitioners’ strong demand for more education to improve identification and responses to CSE.

This article offers an extensive theoretical and analytical interrogation of dominant trafficking discourses, with particular emphasis on Ghana, Nigeria, and the wider West African sub-region. It argues that prevailing global and national anti-trafficking frameworks often obscure children’s agency, misrecognise culturally embedded practices such as fostering and labour migration, and produce unintended harms through criminalisation and rescue-oriented interventions.

This study reviews existing research on the challenges faced by orphans in Jammu and Kashmir, India, highlighting that while some children remain with extended family, others are placed in orphanages when relatives cannot provide care. The review finds that orphans in the region face multiple social, economic, psychological, and health challenges throughout their lives.

This article explores the process of deinstitutionalization as a central challenge of contemporary social policy in Europe, with a special focus on Poland as an example of good practices for Ibero-American countries. The Polish case shows that implementing DI requires coordinated strategies, investment in human capital, digitalization, and multi-sectoral cooperation.

This scoping review of 38 studies examines how narrative therapy is used with children and adolescents in foster care and finds that these young people often lack a sense of control and clear understanding of their life stories. It highlights therapeutic approaches such as externalization, re-authoring, and life story work as promising tools for strengthening identity and well-being, while noting the limited number of rigorously evaluated interventions for this population.

The New Zealand National Care Standards (NCS) Regulations came into effect in 2019, and set out the minimum standard of care that must be provided when the state has custody of a child. This is Oranga Tamariki's fifth report on compliance with the NCS Regulations. It finds that children and youth are still not receiving the minimum standard of care required by the NCS Regulations.

This paper explores the issue of child trafficking in Odisha, India, with a particular focus on the heightened vulnerability of children in tribal regions and the legal measures implemented to prevent trafficking and protect victims during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

This Working Paper outlines the complex ways in which displacement affects girls’ access to justice, and how these are often overlooked. It places special emphasis on the achievement of SDG16.2: 'put an end to abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence and torture against children', and SDG16.7: ‘ensure responsive, inclusive, participatory and representative decision-making at all levels, ’ located in the context of the 70 Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women’s priority theme of ‘ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls. ’

This paper highlights the importance of supporting refugee parents through targeted parenting interventions to promote the well-being and resilience of children and adolescents in refugee settings. It finds that comprehensive, group-based, and longer-term programs, combined with support for basic needs, can strengthen parenting practices, though more research is needed on their cultural relevance and long-term impact.

This evaluation of Save the Children Finland’s Child-Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) programme (2022–2025) found that it improved access to social protection, strengthened government systems, and supported better parenting practices across six countries in Africa and Asia. The programme showed strong results—especially through its parenting component, which improved caregiver engagement and child development outcomes—while highlighting the need for greater government ownership to sustain long-term impact.

This literature review compares the child protection systems of Seychelles, Ghana, Kenya, and Sierra Leone with a shared colonial history under Britain to identify similarities and differences and to understand the implications of the operating child protection system on child protection social workers. Based on the findings, the paper argues for a system that empowers child protection social workers to work with discretion in the child's best interest rather than within a restrictive, controlled system.