This report documents Ukraine’s Soviet-era system of orphanages and other institutions for children with disabilities. The report details the violence, exploitation, and other human rights violations that are frequently committed against these children. It also shows how families who wish to keep their children with disabilities at home are often forced to institutionalize them as a result of lack of support. 

This document reports on an Institutional Learning Process that has critically analysed the impact and effectiveness of Terre des hommes’ (Tdh) engagement in Albania over the last 14 years. It looks at the role Tdh has played in the emergence of a State Child Protection System (CPS) in Albania. 

The purpose of the toolkit is to assist all public authorities in Europe involved in the programming and implementation of EU Structural Funds (and other relevant funds) to make decisions which will help to improve the lives of more than a million European citizens currently living in institutional care. The toolkit aims to explain how EU funds can support national, regional and local authorities in designing and implementing structural reforms to develop quality family-based and community-based alternatives. The toolkit explicitly deals with the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), but it aims to apply also to the programming and implementation of the European Agricultural and Rural Development Fund (EARDF) and the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA). 

This report was written by Keetie Roelen and Helen Karki Chettri from the Centre for Social Protection (CSP) at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), with inputs and support from Family for Every Child and Challenging Heights, Ghana. The report investigates the links between child wellbeing, children’s care, family cohesion and the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme (LEAP), a national social protection scheme in Ghana which aims to reduce extreme poverty in the country and is centred on providing cash transfers to the most vulnerable.

This fact sheet summarizes a qualitative research study conducted by the National Adoption Coalition South Africa (NACSA) that explored child abandonment and adoption in the context of African ancestral beliefs in urban South Africa. The goal of this one-year study was to better understand the growing practice of child abandonment and declining adoption rates in South Africa.

The United Nations, Department for Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social Policy and Development released the Final Report of the Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on "Family Policy Development: Achievements and Challenges” which was produced after the 14-15 May 2015 EGM. The meeting focused on changing families, family law reforms, violence in the family and their impact on family policy development.

A press release from the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India recapped a series of new initiatives by the Ministry during 2015. The achievements relevant to children’s care are briefly described below and include the launch of the flagship programme Beti Bachao Beto Padhao for protection of the girl child; several initiatives to track, restore, and rehabilitate missing children; and adoption reforms and a new foster care system.

In this TED talk, pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains how childhood trauma--such as abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse--has real, tangible effects on the development of the child's brain. Children who have experienced high levels of trauma and adverse childhood experiences are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. This is because of the body's stress response system, which is activated repeatedly during childhood by the adversity. 

This study carried out in the United States used a lens of family stress theory to explore adoptive parents’ responses to unexpected characteristics of their children. 

On July 27–29, 2015, the Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally, in partnership with the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, held a workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to examine topics related to supporting family and community investments in young children globally. 

This handbook authored by the World Health Organization Europe and Liverpool John Moores University – based on a series of interviews with the world's leading experts on preventing child maltreatment – provides practical information to policy-makers, practitioners and others on implementing prevention programmes. The handbook describes key principles for selecting and delivering programmes, and important practical considerations, including resources and technical support. 

Retrak has released a literature review on independent living programmes in an effort to understand the needs of young people coming of age on the streets.