This policy brief summarizes the key findings and recommendations from the International Review of Parent Advocacy in Child Welfare in low, middle and high-income countries, and identifies elements of a strategy to strengthen children’s care and protection through parent participation.
Research has shown the harm of orphanage care on children’s health, development and wellbeing and how orphanage volunteering is working to perpetuate these institutional systems which separate children from their families and communities. There is now a global movement to end both practices. These key policy recommendations were published as part of the "Put Children First: End Orphanage Care" campaign.
The COVID-19 pandemic is destined to leave millions more children without family caregivers. Increases in mortality of parents and other caregivers in the COVID-19 pandemic are accompanied by increases in extreme vulnerability from loss of livelihoods, schooling, health recovery and usual sources of service provision and support. This webinar aims to bring an understanding of how COVID-19 will affect the lives of children, how lessons learned from prior emergencies can be adapted, and how an understanding of complex adversities can maximize the effectiveness of our response.
Recent international research has warned of the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown on vulnerable children. However, little is known regarding the in-care population. The objective of this study was to find out how children in residential care perceived the influence of the COVID-19 lockdown in their everyday life, relationships and subjective well-being. Participants and setting: 856 children from 10 to 17 years old (Mage = 15.5, males = 71.2%, females = 28.8%) living in residential centres in Catalonia.
Providing effective mental health services to unaccompanied children released from federal immigration custody is both critically important and incredibly challenging. Developed by children’s rights attorneys and mental health experts on trauma and immigration, this Guide is grounded in the voices and experiences of unaccompanied children.
This report found that the types of abuse and the characteristics of both abused children and offenders in Saudi Arabia saw significant changes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Sexual and emotional abuses were reported more frequently, and the male gender is considered to feature more commonly in reports prior to the pandemic era than during the pandemic.
Findings of this report suggest that early screenings for trauma and behavioral health needs may provide important information that could be used to identify children's needs, make appropriate service referrals, establish well-matched placements, and support resource parents and birth parents toward better permanency outcomes.
In France, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a general lockdown from mid-March to mid-May 2020, forcing families to remain confined. This study found a significant increase in the relative frequency of young children hospitalized for physical abuse from 2017 (0.053%) to 2020 (0.073%).
This webinar, the sixth in the Transforming Children's Care Webinar Series, provided an introduction to trauma-informed care from various perspectives and vantage points.
This virtual study tour aims to provide you with an overview of care reform in Malawi from the comfort of your own home. Care reform relates to the care of children. It refers to efforts to improve the legal and policy frameworks, structures, services, supports and resources that determine and deliver alternative care, prevent family separation and support families to care for children well.
This paper promotes a system strengthening approach to care reform. It begins with an explanation of child protection and care and the relationship between these two concepts. It goes on to explain why system strengthening is needed to improve children’s care, and how care reform can be carried out systematically, using a range of examples from across the Eastern and Southern Africa region. The paper is aimed at UNICEF country office staff, government and others working on children’s care and protection in the region.
The purpose of this article is to describe the process of testing and piloting the UNICEF protocol on children in residential care in three countries: India, Ghana, and Kazakhstan.
The guide recommends a series of measures aimed at States, which focus on protecting family unity, preventing separation, and ensuring reunification in the context of human mobility, including for unaccompanied or separated children and adolescents, who require international protection or who leave their homes in search of better opportunities or family reunification.
This research brought together the testimonies of adoption professionals (national and international) concerned with the situation of abandoned and placed children in five South American countries: Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia and Peru. The aim of this study is to gain a better understanding of the new realities of adoption, in a context where these countries have chosen to limit or stop their foreign adoption practices.
Gatekeeping es el término que describe el mecanismo, proceso o pasos específicos involucrados en la toma de decisiones relacionadas con el cuidado de las niñas, niños y adolescentes (NNA) donde exista la posibilidad de riesgo de separación familiar, o pérdida del cuidado parental.
This Gatekeeping Factsheet, targeting those engaged in care decisions, including government actors/institutions, civil society organizations, practitioners and parents/caregivers explains the objectives of gatekeeping and essential components of a gatekeeping system, core principles of effective gatekeeping and signs that a gatekeeping system is operating well or needs to be strengthened.
This second webinar in the 'Introducing Guidance for Alternative Care Provision During COVID-19' webinar series hosted on 28 January 2021, is aimed at policy makers and explains their role in developing policies and guidance to prevent family separation during an outbreak.
The first webinar, hosted on 27 January 2021, is aimed at health practitioners with the goal of introducing the guidance and helping practitioners understand their role in preventing family separation and supporting unaccompanied and separated children.
To complement the CIF partner interventions targeting the child and family and to enhance the sustainability of reintegration efforts, the project is using a Hotspot approach to address community-level, environmental factors that may contribute to a child’s increased risk of family separation. The collective application of the Hotspot approach is completely innovative in the Zambian child care reform space. In this brief, we spotlight the Hotspot approach and promising observations to date in undertaking this strategy.
Building on the CIF+ Learning Brief Vol 1.pdf, Volume 2 draws from CIF+ partner programming experience, achievements and lessons learned. This document outlines lessons for stakeholders that are interested in child reintegration efforts and highlights examples of the pilot as it works to support children and families in Zambia.
The CIF+ pilot is a collaborative, locally led, intensive effort with the main aim to reintegrate 200 children from Child Care Facilities (CCFs) in Lusaka district, into families over a period of three years (2019-2021).
This study provides an overview of the situation of children on the move within Africa and assessed the extent to which Member States of the African Union have established normative and institutional structures to address the needs of children on the move in their territories. It presents an informed overview of the routes that children move along in within the continent, the reasons why they move and where these children move to as well as the risks that they are exposed to whilst on the move. The study also scrutinises the legal frameworks affecting child mobility in the continent.
A systematic review exploring the lived experience of matching children with foster families and examining the evidence on the outcomes of matching decisions.
The State of the World’s Children 2021 calls for commitment, communication and action to promote good mental health for every child, protect vulnerable children and care for children facing the greatest challenges.
This report presents the very first quantitative analysis of the risk of sexual violence against children in conflict for the period 1990-2019.
