This study explores the lived experiences of orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa’s rural Vhembe District and finds that they face significant challenges, including maltreatment, deprivation, neglect, abuse, and social alienation. The findings highlight an urgent need for strengthened psychosocial support through coordinated stakeholder action, reinforced drop-in centres, and enhanced prioritization by social workers.

This paper outlines the development of a community-led child protection approach (Seeds), created through a multi-stage process involving a systematic literature review, formative research in Uganda and Lebanon, a field test in Sri Lanka, a feasibility study in Colombia, and expert review, resulting in a six-phase model designed to strengthen children’s protection and their sense of safety.

Street children in Bangladesh face chronic food insecurity, unstable shelter, limited access to health and education, and pervasive violence and abuse, as revealed through qualitative interviews with twenty children in Khulna district. Based on the hierarchy of needs expressed by the children, the study identifies essential long-term protection interventions, including community shelter services, psychological counseling, and skill-development training, and underscores the urgent need to implement these measures to ensure their safety and well-being.

This study, based on vignette-based focus group discussions with social workers in Norway and Sweden, examines how they balance children’s cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic continuity with other needs when matching migrant-background children with foster families, revealing a complex process shaped by the child’s and parents’ wishes, foster carers’ capacities, and organizational constraints. While social workers value cultural continuity, they often prioritize more urgent care needs—especially amid a significant shortage of foster families—creating a risk that children’s rights and needs related to their cultural background may not be fully met.

CELCIS’ October 2025 webinar explored recent developments in residential child care across Scotland, featuring insights on nurture-based practice, shifts in inspection approaches aligned with The Promise, and staff development through reflective practice. Speakers highlighted how new care models, regulatory changes, and whole-system approaches are strengthening practice and improving outcomes for children and young people.

This Framework outlines how countries can build strong, coherent, multisectoral systems that ensure all parents and caregivers have access to the support needed to raise children in safe and nurturing environments, providing a shared foundation for aligning policies, financing, workforce development and service delivery across health, education, social protection, child protection and community-based services.

The Family Network Pilot (FNP) aims to help UK children stay safely within their extended families and prevent entry into care by providing Family Group Conferences and Family Network Support Packages. This report evaluates the pilot’s implementation, processes, and impacts across seven local authorities, using qualitative research and monitoring data analysis.

This report explores how childhood institutional care negatively shapes health, well‑being, housing, and social outcomes well into older adulthood for people now aged 50 and above in Australia. It argues for a shift away from institutional aged care and towards trauma‑informed, person‑centered home or community care — designed with and for care leavers — to uphold dignity and improve long-term quality of life.

This study explores how children living in children’s homes in Luxembourg experience their daily lives, revealing that while many feel sad or worried, they also demonstrate resilience and the ability to find joy. The findings highlight that children feel better when adults listen and take them seriously, and that additional support with school and caring relationships can improve their well-being.

This study identifies high rates of gross and fine motor delays among young children living in residential care facilities in Thailand and examines factors contributing to these developmental challenges. These findings highlight the developmental vulnerabilities of young children in residential care and point to key predictors that can inform early interventions.

This article examines how key concepts and terminologies within and surrounding the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child shape narratives in the African human rights landscape, emphasizing the need to interrogate and deconstruct them through a decolonial lens. Using document analysis, it argues that critically problematising these terms is essential for strengthening the African Children’s Committee’s application of decoloniality and for advancing equity and accountability in child rights implementation.

This study explores the lived experiences of South African grandparents fostering their orphaned teenage grandchildren, revealing significant financial, emotional, psychological, and physical challenges. Despite these difficulties, grandparents demonstrate strong resilience supported by religious, family, and community networks, underscoring the need for standardized screening protocols for prospective foster caregivers.

This study examines Norwegian birth parents’ perspectives on the support they need for successful family reunification, revealing significant gaps in guidance, financial assistance, and help mobilizing social networks. The findings underscore that low trust in child welfare services can hinder parents’ willingness to accept support, highlighting the need for stronger institutional collaboration and tailored assistance before, during, and after reunification.

This article analyzes the gap between Pakistan’s progressive child protection laws and the harsh realities faced by the country’s 1.5 million destitute and neglected children, highlighting how weak implementation, custodial care models, and social stigma undermine their rights and well-being. It argues that meaningful rehabilitation requires shifting from welfare-based responses to empowerment-focused, holistic support systems that integrate legal protection, trauma-informed care, and market-relevant education.

O acolhimento institucional é uma medida protetiva no âmbito da assistência social, que busca oferecer apoio social para crianças e adolescentes em situação de ameaça ou violação de direitos.

This article examines how national care systems for orphans and vulnerable children in Cambodia, Uganda, and Zambia are governed, drawing on case studies and a review of existing research. It highlights the gap between strong policy commitments and weak on-the-ground implementation, pointing to historical, political, and capacity-related factors that hinder effective care and protection.

Cambiar la Forma en que Cuidamos (CTWWC, por sus siglas en inglés) es una iniciativa global que promueve un cuidado familiar seguro y afectuoso para los niños.

L’Observation générale n°10 de l’ACERWC fournit des orientations faisant autorité sur la mise en œuvre de l’article 25 de la Charte africaine, en clarifiant les obligations des États de protéger et de soutenir les enfants privés de soins parentaux grâce à la prévention, au renforcement des familles, à des solutions de prise en charge alternatives de qualité et à une réforme globale des systèmes de prise en charge. Elle appelle à une transition de la prise en charge institutionnelle vers des approches familiales et communautaires, à de meilleures données et à un renforcement de la supervision, ainsi qu’à une action coordonnée des gouvernements et de leurs partenaires afin de garantir que chaque enfant grandisse dans un environnement sûr et bienveillant.

This article examines how Terre des Hommes Netherlands used a participatory co-design process to develop thematic programmes addressing sexual exploitation, child labour, and exploitation in humanitarian settings as part of its Listen Up! Strategy (2023–2030). By integrating insights from research, children, staff, and local partners through workshops, storytelling, and problem analysis, the process combined academic knowledge with lived experiences to create context-specific, evidence-informed interventions and Theories of Change.

This endline report reviews changes in child trafficking and child labor across four districts in Sierra Leone between 2019 and 2024, drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data. It summarizes major findings, outlines key recommendations, and provides an overview of the study’s methodology and program phases from baseline to endline.

This article examines how racial inequality shapes institutional care for adolescents in Brazil and highlights how racial literacy workshops exposed both gaps in practitioners’ understanding and systemic barriers to anti-racist practice. Despite these challenges, the intervention showed promising improvements, underscoring the urgent need to embed racial literacy in public social assistance policies and high-complexity care services to better protect Black adolescents.

This article presents a comparative analysis of the Czech Republic and Colombia’s implementation of the United Nations Guidelines for Alternative Family Care. Based on secondary data, it identifies a shared adherence to the UN framework; a strong Czech system for alternative caregivers’ selection, training and support; a deep ethical commitment of Colombian foster families to ensure children’s well-being, despite limited resources; and the relevance of supporting parents at risk of having their children removed from their care and integrating the effects of unplanned migration into alternative care strategies.

This article presents research from eight countries showing that many child–family separations are preventable, with children and young people identifying common drivers of separation rooted in unmet basic needs and broader socio-economic pressures. The study concludes that strengthening laws, policies, and access to essential services—guided by the lived experiences of children—can help keep families together and reduce reliance on alternative care.

The Children’s Commissioner’s report “The Criminalisation of Children in Care” reveals a deeply concerning pattern: children in care in the UK are disproportionately drawn into the criminal justice system, often for low-level incidents that, in a family setting, would be handled without police involvement. To address this, the Commissioner calls for a strengthened, statutory protocol among police, local authorities, and youth services; better diversion pathways; a more child-friendly prosecution process; increased legal aid and training; more stable, high-quality care placements; and improved data sharing to monitor and prevent harmful police involvement.