This book offers a comparative analysis of child and youth welfare systems across eight European countries, highlighting how diverse legal, historical, and institutional contexts shape responses to young people with complex support needs. Through contributions from researchers and practitioners, it reveals shared tensions—such as care versus control and participation versus coercion—while providing a multi-perspective foundation for transnational learning and policy reflection.

This report documents the finding of the exercise undertaken by the Children and Families Together (CAFT)-India consortium to assess how Indian states are positioned for disability-inclusive care reform. Drawing from data across States, this highlights each State’s existing care systems and inclusion practices, offering valuable insights for policymakers, practitioners, and organizations advancing inclusive child protection and care reform in India.

This report presents suggested adaptations to include disability-related questions across three key case management tools under the Indian Juvenile Justice Act 2015 – the Social Investigation Report, Individual Care Plan and Case History Form. It also documents the consultative process undertaken for these adaptations and offers practical recommendations to help child protection systems better identify, support, and include children with disabilities.

This report examines how India’s child protection laws interact with disability legislations, highlighting areas where greater focus is required to bring consonance to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities in need of care and protection are upheld.

This study addresses the urgent need for family-based care for children without parental care, as emphasised by the UN General Assembly’s 2019 resolution, India’s Juvenile Justice Act 2015, and Mission Vatsalya. The primary aim is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Thrive Scale™ tool developed by Miracle Foundation India in generating measurable, data-driven decisions to plan and implement suitable interventions for family strengthening.

This article compares the existing legislative, policy and practice supports for young people transitioning from out-of-home care (known as care leavers) aged 18–25 years in three jurisdictions: Sweden, Norway and Australia. Attention is drawn to the impact of the different welfare regimes in these countries (i.e., social democratic vs liberal), the inconsistencies across different states and regions, and the eligibility and adequacy of existing support programmes.

This article reviews global evidence on the impacts of institutional care versus family-based alternatives and examines how these findings inform foster care reform in Ogun State, Nigeria. It synthesizes research from 2009–2025 to identify key developmental outcomes, implementation lessons, and policy priorities for transitioning away from institutional care.

This three-year initiative focused on strengthening family reintegration and preventing unnecessary child separation in Delhi, India

This scoping review examines evidence from Asia and culturally comparable contexts to understand the experiences and support needs of young people transitioning from out-of-home care, with a particular focus on Indonesia. The findings highlight widespread gaps in formal leaving-care and aftercare support, alongside promising practices, the importance of informal networks and independent living skills, and the influence of stigma, gender, and resilience on care leavers’ transitions to adulthood.

This mixed-methods study, drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from all 15 counties in Liberia, examines the drivers and scale of children living in street situations through interviews with children, parents, government, UN, and civil society actors.

This Chapter in the Book, Participatory Approaches in Child and Family Social Work explores the significance of advocacy in promoting the rights and well-being of children in care.

New data from the Children’s Commissioner for England found 669 children living in unregistered children’s homes as of 1 September 2025—a 12% decrease from the previous year. While the reduction is welcome, these placements remain unlawful and unsafe, highlighting an ongoing failure to adequately protect vulnerable children.

In 2024, the 1st Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children (VAC) brought together 103 governments to make formal commitments to prevent and respond to VAC. This review analyses the pledges announced at the time of the conference, while acknowledging that some governments may have subsequently refined or expanded their commitments, as noted in the limitations.

The piece argues that Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, is mishandling the growing crisis of street children by relying mainly on enforcement actions — such as rounding up boys seen begging or washing windscreens along busy roadways — rather than addressing the underlying causes of

The KUOW article explores a striking reduction in the number of children in southern Uganda who have lost a parent, dropping from nearly one in four in the early 2000s to just 6% by 2022, and links this trend to global HIV treatment efforts. New research suggests that U.S.

This interactive graphic depicts the vital processes, mechanisms, and care options necessary for supporting children at risk of being or already separated from their parents. It illustrates how best practices work together to prioritize family care, reduce unnecessary separation, and support

This study examines the group foster care model at Hope Community Village in Kerala, India as an innovative, family-based approach to supporting children in need of care and protection. Findings show the model delivers rights-based, comprehensive care aligned with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, while highlighting challenges related to funding, policy, staffing, and social acceptance, and demonstrating its potential as a replicable framework for child protection.

This paper presents a rights-based framework for assessing when care orders are justified in child protection, integrating human rights standards, statutory criteria, and international jurisprudence around the principles of necessity, proportionality, and the child’s best interests. It offers practical guidance to improve consistency and accountability in decision-making, supporting evidence-based reform while reducing arbitrary or disproportionate child removals and prioritizing family preservation where possible.

This brief presents the case for engaging paraprofessional social service workers as part of a strengthened child protection and care system in Ukraine. The advocacy brief outlines how paraprofessionals—working under the supervision of qualified professionals—can help address workforce shortages, particularly in crisis-affected and resource-constrained contexts.

Youth Independent Living outlines the role of supported and supervised independent living as a key care option for adolescents and young people transitioning out of alternative care in Ukraine. Grounded in international legal frameworks and global evidence, the brief explains how independent living services support youth to safely transition to adulthood while prioritizing their best interests over institutional care.

This brief outlines why and how the voices of children, young people and caregivers with lived experience of the care system should be central to child protection and care reform in Ukraine. The brief clarifies key concepts and levels of participation, emphasizing that meaningful engagement goes beyond tokenism and must ensure influence, feedback and accountability.

This paper introduces the Collective Impact (CI) approach as a structured, equity-focused framework for advancing complex care reforms involving multiple actors. It explains how coordinated action across government, civil society, communities and non-traditional partners can move efforts from fragmented or isolated interventions toward shared goals, common metrics and sustained systems-level change.

The paper provides an overview of Ukraine’s legal and policy framework related to child protection and care reform. The document reviews key national laws, strategies and regulations to assess their alignment with international child rights standards and the objectives of the reform to ensure that every child grows up in a family environment.

This paper outlines the economic case for investing in family- and community-based care as a foundation for children’s well-being and long-term human capital development. Focusing on Ukraine, the paper highlights systemic underinvestment in social services and argues that rebalancing public spending toward an integrated “cash plus care” approach would generate significant economic and social returns.

This document outlines a minimum package of social services aimed at preventing child-family separation, supporting reintegration of children from institutional care into families, and sustaining family-based care. The package includes eight core services: resilience-building support; accompaniment for families raising orphans; early intervention; inclusive education assistance; day care for children with disabilities; social support for families in difficult life circumstances; social integration for care leavers; and supported living for young people with disabilities.