South African Early Childhood Review 2016

Ilifa Labantwana, the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the Department for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) in the Presidency

This report reviews South Africa’s National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy, which was approved by the Cabinet in December 2015. The policy is aimed at providing a framework for multi-sectoral Early Childhood Development services in South Africa. 

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A Shared Sentence: The devastating toll of parental incarceration on kids, families and communities

Kids Count - Annie E. Casey Foundation

This policy report from Kids Count outlines the impacts that parental incarceration has on children, and on communities as a whole, particularly in the context of mass incarceration in the United States. The report concludes with recommendations for investing in families to mediate the detrimental effects of parental incarceration, which disproportionately affects people of color in the United States.

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Evolving Methods for an Expanding Field: Global Research with Children and Families in Adversity

CPC Learning Network

The CPC Learning Network held its biennial meeting, Evolving Methods for an Expanding Field: Global Research with Children and Families in Adversity, on 21 and 22 June 2016. The meeting aimed at presenting innovative research on international child protection and family welfare and identifying key knowledge gaps and ways to collaborate to fill those gaps. 

Rise Monitoring and Evaluation of Reintegration Toolkit Working Draft

Claire Cody & Joanna Wakia - RISE

This toolkit is primarily for individuals working at organisations that assist and support children and young people in their reintegration back into families and communities. The toolkit will be of particular relevance to individuals who are involved in the planning of programmes and the implementation of monitoring and evaluation activities. The toolkit provides ideas, examples and suggestions of how organisations could collect monitoring and evaluation data with, from and about the children and young people they work with.

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The role of carers in supporting the progress of care leavers in the world of work

Robbie Gilligan and Laura Arnau-Sabatés - Child & Family Social Work

The aim of this component of a preliminary cross-national study (Ireland and Catalonia) of care leavers' experience in the world of work is to explore how carers may influence the entry of young people in care into the world of work and how they may also influence the young people's progress in that world.

Beyond Survival: The Case for Investing in Young Children Globally

National Academy of Medicine

This paper from the U.S. National Academy of Medicine argues the importance of investment in early childhood development and serves as a call to action “to close the gap between what is known and what is done to support the development of children globally and, in turn, sustainable progress for communities and nations.”

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Interventions to improve supervised contact visits between children in out of home care and their parents: a systematic review

Tracey Bullen Research Fellow, Stephanie Taplin, Morag McArthur, Cathy Humphreys and Margaret Kertesz - Child & Family Social Work

The aim of this systematic review was to evaluate the evidence for interventions aimed at improving the quality of contact visits between parents and their children who are in out-of-home care.

Stop Orphanage Volunteering University Pledge

London School of Economics Volunteer Centre and Better Volunteering Better Care Initiative

The London School of Economics Volunteer Centre and the Better Volunteering Better Care Initiative have collaborated to develop a pledge that can be adopted by universities and other institutions of higher or further education. By adding this pledge to their websites, universities and other supporters promise not to advertise orphanage volunteering trips to students and to “endeavour to ensure that such opportunities are neither facilitated nor promoted within our institution.”

Growing up Without Parents: Socialisation and Gender Relations in Orphaned-Child-Headed Households in Rural Zimbabwe

Monica Francis-Chizororo - Journal of Southern African Studies

Drawing on ethnographic research with five child heads and their siblings in Zimbabwe, this article explores how orphaned children living in ‘child only’ households organise themselves in terms of household domestic and paid work roles, explores the socialisation of children by children and the negotiation of teenage girls' movement. 

Barriers and incentives to orphan care in a time of AIDS and economic crisis: a cross-sectional survey of caregivers in rural Zimbabwe

Brian H Howard, Carl V Phillips, Nelia Matinhure, Karen J Goodman, Sheryl A McCurdy and Cary A Johnson - BMC Public Health

This study explores barriers and possible incentives to orphan care in Zimbabwe.