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.
This study aims to answer two research questions: a) How do youth and staff/professionals define/conceptualize authentic youth engagement (AYE)? and b) What are youths’ and staff/professionals’ recommended strategies for authentically engaging youth? Thirty stakeholder interviews (15 youth, 15 staff/professionals) and 81 surveys (46 youth, 35 staff/professionals) were completed.
This bulletin provides information for child welfare professionals about the importance of permanency for youth and strategies for achieving it. Permanency efforts for youth should include both legal permanency (e.g., reunification, adoption, kinship care) and relational permanency (i.e., a relationship or connection with a caring adult, such as a relative, neighbor, service provider, teacher, or other important person in the youth's life). These adults may provide lifelong support that can help youth transition to adulthood and may even become a legal permanent option for the youth.
This report provides key recommendations from three roundtable discussions about how to support permanency with kin, relational permanency, and successful older youth adoption.
Most children involved with the child welfare system are not separated from their families but instead receive services while living at home. This issue brief explores effective in-home services that are being used to promote safety and help keep children and families together, as well as practical considerations for their implementation. It then presents promising practices used by States and jurisdictions that are working to improve their delivery of in-home services.
This episode focuses on the current reality of reunification across the public child welfare system. Listeners will hear a conversation among child welfare professionals, members of the American Bar Association (ABA) Center on Children and the Law(opens in new window), the Children’s Bureau, and an alumnus of foster care.
The purpose of this study is to determine the association of face-to-face contact with biological parents and externalized behaviors, while taking into account placement instability and foster parent interactive sensitivity.
The purpose of this study is to determine the association of face-to-face contact with biological parents and externalized behaviors, while taking into account placement instability and foster parent interactive sensitivity.
This policy brief draws on the substantial evidence on the health, educational, and economic benefits of family-friendly policies to recommend four transformative shifts in workplaces.
This is the 3rd and final presentation in the Kinship Care in Brazil mini-series. Here, Claudia Cabral of Associação Brasileira Terra dos Homens describes the importance of considering the extended family when making decisions about children’s care, and efforts to advocate to the Brazilian government.
