Harmful care. To what extent is terminology from medicine and clinical psychology applicable to out‐of‐home care?

Emelie Shanks, Ulf Jonsson, Stefan Wiklund, Alexander Rozental - Child & Family Social Work

In this article the authors attempt to disentangle different aspects of potentially harmful care for looked after children, as well as to discuss potential pathways to more systematically approach and report adverse events for this group.

A model for Early Years support work with families and children with additional needs in Dushanbe, Tajikistan

Rachel Tainsh & Jonathan Watkins - HealthProm

This report is the result 4 of a two-year EU funded project “An Early Years Support Centre (EYSC) service in Dushanbe: Reducing poverty, empowering vulnerable families, strengthening partnerships and advocating for rights”. It outlines the model of support that was developed through the EYSC project in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan. 

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Effects of institutionalization and parental living status on children’s self-esteem, externalizing and internalizing problems in Rwanda

Epaphrodite Nsabimana, Eugène Rutembesa, Peter Wilhelm, Chantal Martin Soelch - Frontiers in Psychiatry

This study aimed at investigating specifically whether institutionalization impacts negatively children’s psychological adjustment defined in terms of externalizing behavior, internalizing behavior and self-esteem and whether having living parents has additional influence. Ninety-five institutionalized and 82 not institutionalized children in Rwanda, aged 9 to 16, participated in the study.

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Endline Report: Economic Strengthening to Keep and Reintegrate Children into Families (ESFAM) Project

ChildFund International and FHI 360

This final report describes the Economic Strengthening to Keep and Reintegrate Children into Families (ESFAM) project and presents findings from an evaluation of the program, including its implementation and outcomes as well as its impacts. 

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Family Resilience Project in Uganda

AVSI USA

This video presents the work of the FARE family strengthening program in Uganda to prevent separation of families and reintegrate children who are separated from their families, including the story of one young person and his family who were impacted by the program.

Bright Spots Snapshot 2018 - Our Lives Beyond Care: Care leavers’ views on their well-being in 2018

Coram Voice

This snapshot summarises the findings from the responses of 474 16-25 year old care leavers who completed the Your Life Beyond Care (YLBC) survey in 6 local authorities in England - an overall response rate of 30%. This snapshot gives an insight into how care leavers really feel about their lives.

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Pathway to Permanency: Enact a State Statute Formally Recognizing Indian Custodianship as an Approved Path to Ending a Child in Need of Aid Case

Courtney Lewis - Alaska Law Review

This article argues that the US state of Alaska should enact a state statute to provide clear guidance to state child welfare practitioners and state courts that Alaska’s state government recognizes an Indian custodianship created through Tribal law or custom as a pathway for Indian children to exit the overburdened state foster care system.

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Legal and Institutional Frameworks on Child Justice Administration in South Africa

Mariam Adepeju Abdulraheem-Mustapha - Child Justice Administration in Africa

This chapter from the boom Child Justice Administration in Africa examines the development of the child justice system in South Africa. The empirical findings in this book revealed the models put in place for alternative care of children in need of care and protection, which the author believes were hindered by inadequate budgetary allocations and could have been recorded in the administration of child justice in South Africa.

Relative strangers: Sibling estrangements experienced by children in out-of-home care and moving towards permanence

Christine Jones, Gillian Henderson, Ruth Woods - Children and Youth Services Review

This study extends the research on the experiences and outcomes of siblings in care by comprehensively mapping sibling networks both within and outside the care system and measuring sibling estrangement (living apart and lack of contact) over time among children in Scotland.

Chinese Special Needs Adoption, Demand, and the Global Politics of Disability

Erin Raffety - Disability Studies Quarterly

This open access article explores three related phenomena: first, the abandonment and institutionalization of children with disabilities in China that increased disproportionately in the 2000s; second, the important relationships between such abandonments, culture, economics, and politics in contemporary China; and third, the relationship between such abandonments, the increasing rates at which Chinese orphans with disabilities are being adopted to Western countries through Inter-country Adoption (ICA), and the global politics of ICA and disability.

The Subjective Well-Being of Portuguese Children in Foster Care, Residential Care and Children Living with their Families: Challenges and Implications for a Child Care System Still Focused on Institutionalization

Paulo Delgado, João M. S. Carvalho, Carme Montserrat, Joan Llosada-Gistau - Child Indicators Research

The aim of this study is to compare the subjective well-being (SWB) of children hosted in institutions and in foster families with the well-being of children living with their families. Results indicate that children in residential care have a lower SWB in all variables compared to foster care and general populations groups.

The Long‐term effects of institutional rearing, foster care intervention and disruptions in care on brain electrical activity in adolescence

Ranjan Debnath, Alva Tang, Charles H. Zeanah, Charles A. Nelson, Nathan A. Fox - Developmental Science

In this article, the authors present findings from a follow‐up assessment from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) - the first longitudinal study to investigate the neurodevelopment of institutionalized infants randomized to a foster care (FCG) intervention versus care as usual (CAUG)- of brain electrical activity as indexed by resting EEG at age 16 years.

Policy and practice supports for young people transitioning from out-of-home care: An analysis of six recent inquiries in Australia

Philip Mendes, Samone McCurdy - Journal of Social Work

This article uses a content analysis methodology to critically examine and compare the findings of six recent Australian child protection inquiries (five at state and territory level and one Commonwealth) in relation to their discrete sections on leaving care.

The Costs and Potential Savings of Supportive Housing for Child Welfare–Involved Families

Josh Leopold & Amanda Gold - Urban Institute

This study evaluated the effectiveness of the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families funded Partnerships to Demonstrate the Effectiveness of Supportive Housing for Families in the Child Welfare System, a five-year, $25 million demonstration that provided supportive housing to families in the child welfare system, in five sites. This report summarizes the results of the cost study, which estimates the costs of the housing and services offered in the demonstration and any savings, or additional costs, resulting from the demonstration’s effects on families’ use of homeless programs and child welfare services.

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Participation in Child Protection: Theorizing Children’s Perspectives

Mandy Duncan

There have long been doubts within social work about the viability of reconciling participatory practice with the statutory power that comes hand-in-hand with child protection work. This book explores this issue by proposing an original theory of children’s participation within statutory child protection interventions. It prioritises children’s voices through presentation of a wide collection of children’s experiences of the UK child protection system including three unique in-depth accounts.