This report documents the history and achievements of the Child Protection Area of Responsibility (CP AoR) from its origin in 2005 up to its consolidation with the integrated Protection Cluster at the end of 2025.

This randomized trial in Thailand evaluated a blended parenting programme combining in-person sessions and messaging support, finding no reduction in child maltreatment at one-month follow-up. Results suggest the need to refine programme design and target higher-risk families, as well as assess longer-term impacts to better understand effectiveness.

This scoping review examines why individuals and families in Western countries choose to foster or adopt children with disabilities, identifying motivations such as altruism, personal values, commitment to caregiving, and perceived family enrichment. The findings highlight opportunities to strengthen recruitment and support strategies by aligning messaging and services with these motivations to improve care stability and outcomes.

This study evaluates how NGOs in Geita, Tanzania support street children, finding that while basic needs like food, shelter, and healthcare are prioritized, education and psychosocial services are often overlooked. It highlights funding constraints and coordination gaps as key challenges, calling for standardized service packages and more sustainable, rights-based approaches to improve long-term outcomes.

This study explores how kinship lineage and inheritance norms in Ghana influence decisions about placing children in the care of maternal or paternal grandmothers. While traditionally significant, findings suggest these norms are weakening due to legal reforms, social change, and interethnic marriages, with limited influence on most contemporary kinship care arrangements.

This article explores the lived experiences of street-connected youth in African cities, highlighting the multiple socio-economic challenges they face alongside their resilience in navigating daily survival. Drawing on focus groups across three cities, it reconceptualizes resilience as a dynamic, context-driven process shaped by social, institutional, and environmental factors, with implications for policy and practice.

This webinar—hosted by the Transitioning Residential Care Working Group under the Transforming Children's Care Collaborative—brought together practitioners from Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Eastern and Southern Africa to explore how social norms shape efforts to transition away from residential care and how they can be effectively addressed.

This article examines the growing prevalence of child-headed households in Zimbabwe, exploring the challenges these children face and the effectiveness of community-based interventions in supporting their wellbeing. It highlights the role of families, community networks, and social services in mitigating risks and proposes a holistic, community-driven model to strengthen resilience and improve outcomes for vulnerable children.

This article explores how out-of-home care systems across five countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States) approach cultural care for children, examining the organisational structures, leadership, and practices that support or hinder children’s connections to their culture, family, and community. Drawing on interviews with service providers, it highlights key drivers of effective practice and offers practical tools and insights for strengthening culturally responsive, system-wide approaches to safeguarding children’s identity and wellbeing.

Child abuse and neglect in urban Vietnam are strongly associated with socio-economic hardship and family vulnerabilities, including low income, residential instability, single-parent households, low parental education, and alcohol misuse. The study underscores the need for integrated, community-based interventions that address both structural inequalities and family-level risk factors to effectively prevent child maltreatment.

One in four Indians lives in poverty, and many children enter institutional care due to factors like economic hardship, family disruption, and social vulnerabilities, highlighting the need for holistic, socio-legal support systems. This study finds that life skills education significantly improves children’s resilience and self-efficacy, with higher outcomes among those exposed to such programs, underscoring its importance in helping children build stable, constructive futures.

This scoping review examines how supported visitation in child welfare is defined and practiced, highlighting its role in maintaining parent–child relationships while ensuring emotional safety in complex, trauma-affected contexts. Findings reveal inconsistent implementation, limited focus on children’s experiences, and a lack of relationally grounded approaches, underscoring the need for more coherent, rights-based support for both children and parents.

This toolkit provides tools and resources to service providers working with unaccompanied and separated children across various contexts. The toolkit presents research and background on the experiences, needs, and strengths of unaccompanied and separated children, and specific considerations for how service providers may support children’s long-term well-being and resilience while providing needed services.

This brief, from the US National Child Welfare Center, can help child welfare professionals establish a common understanding among community partners, legislators, agency staff, caregivers, youth, and other partners about what an integrated, comprehensive, Prevention-focused approach looks like along a three-tiered Prevention continuum.

This study examines how mindfulness relates to psychological well-being among adolescents in orphanages in Pakistan, with a focus on the role of self-efficacy. Findings show that higher self-efficacy strengthens the positive impact of mindfulness on well-being, highlighting the importance of both factors in supporting adolescent mental health.

This paper aims to navigate the complex terrain of refugee law with a child-centric approach, evaluating whether the UK adequately safeguards the rights of unaccompanied children. It concludes that whilst the UK’s domestic legislation is in compliance with its international obligations, its asylum procedures ultimately fail to adequately safeguard unaccompanied children and a framework recognising vulnerability (as opposed to chronological age) as the appropriate threshold and determinative factor for safeguarding would better support the rights of unaccompanied minors and age-disputed individuals.

This article argues that the UK child social care system is in crisis, with rising numbers of children in care and persistently poor outcomes despite substantial spending. It identifies austerity, reduced preventative services, and factors such as domestic violence, parental mental health, and substance misuse as key drivers, and calls for systemic reform focused on reducing child poverty, investing in early intervention, and adopting trauma-informed approaches.

This report examines the impact of Evidence-Based Decision-Making (EBDM) Professional Development

on leaders in child welfare in Australia. Findings reveal that

This Out of the Shadows Index tracks how 60 countries across 6 regions – home to 83% of the world’s children – are preventing and responding to sexual violence against children and adolescents.

This qualitative case study examines the challenges and opportunities of alternative childcare services in Bangladesh, finding a growing demand for care options but significant gaps in quality and coordination. Key issues include inadequate emotional and psychosocial support, shortages of trained caregivers, weak monitoring systems, and social stigma, highlighting the need for stronger investment, capacity building, and a more child-centred approach.

This study highlights that children in Kalaallit Nunaat are placed in out-of-home care at disproportionately high rates, creating significant strain on families and the child welfare system. Drawing on community perspectives, it identifies key research priorities focused on how colonization and structural inequalities shape family life, providing a framework to inform efforts to safely reduce reliance on out-of-home care.

This scoping review of 29 studies finds that individuals with care experience face significantly higher rates of mental and physical health challenges across the life course, though research has largely focused on younger populations. It highlights key gaps, particularly in understanding the long-term physical health outcomes of care leavers and the need for clearer distinctions and broader definitions of wellbeing in future research.

This qualitative study examines the drivers, progress, and ongoing challenges in addressing child trafficking in Ghana, drawing on interviews with 80 stakeholders across government, civil society, and affected communities. It finds that while policy and institutional advances have been made, persistent issues such as weak enforcement, limited coordination, and underlying drivers like poverty and migration require stronger, better-resourced, and more survivor-centred responses.

This study assessed the physical health status of children residing in orphanage homes in Lucknow district, India. It found while most had normal nutritional status, many faced challenges, including high school dropout rates, signs of micronutrient deficiencies, and poor oral hygiene.

This study explores the subjective well-being (SWB) of Palestinian-Arab children aged 9–13 in residential care in Israel. It focuses on how these children perceive their well-being in terms of their satisfaction with residential care and life in general.

El curso de Formación de Formadores sobre Menores No Acompañados y Separados (FdF MNAS) está diseñado para preparar a los participantes para impartir formación sobre menores no acompañados y separados (MNAS).

La formation de formateurs sur les enfants non accompagnés et séparés de leur famille (FdF ENA) vise à préparer les participants à animer des formations sur ce sujet.

This study examines how care home staff and managers in the UK perceive and respond to children going missing from care, identifying key factors such as communication, relationships, and organizational support that influence prevention and response. Findings highlight the importance of trauma-informed, child-centred, and collaborative approaches, while noting barriers like resource constraints and inconsistent practices, and offer recommendations to improve safeguarding and outcomes.

Child protection systems in low-resource settings face major challenges due to limited infrastructure, weak data systems, and poor coordination, reducing their ability to identify and respond to risks effectively. This article proposes a data-driven framework using digital technologies and analytics to improve early detection, decision-making, and overall service delivery for vulnerable children.

From trusted information and peer support to access to services and emerging AI-enabled tools, digital innovation is reshaping how families seek support, connect with communities, and navigate everyday challenges. This playbook is a practical framework developed by a Digital Expert Group to help governments, practitioners, innovators, and partners design more human-centered, equitable, and scalable digital support ecosystems for families. 

The Vanam Vasapadum initiative evaluated an arts-based, trauma-informed social-emotional learning program for children in institutional care in Tamil Nadu, finding significant improvements in self-esteem and psychological well-being over three years. Both quantitative and qualitative results highlight that creative, holistic interventions can enhance emotional regulation, resilience, and social skills among vulnerable adolescents, suggesting strong potential for broader mental health promotion.

In the wake of major disruptions to U.S. and global foreign assistance, the global community faces an urgent question: How do we sustain and strengthen support for children in adversity in a rapidly changing landscape? The Collaborative on Global Children's Issues co-convened a webinar to mark the release of two new reports that respond to this moment.

Strong, well-executed evaluations are critical to improving outcomes in the U.S. child welfare system, yet limited evidence and persistent barriers continue to hinder the development of rigorous, systematic studies on program effectiveness, implementation, and cost. This three-brief series examines current evidence, agency and design challenges, and opportunities to strengthen evaluation efforts, with the goal of informing systemwide improvements for children, youth, and families.

This report is an overview of Childlight’s Into the Light Index on Global Technology-Facilitated Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse 2026 Data Update. The update focuses on new emerging data as well as updating existing global and regional prevalence and scale data on Technology-Facilitated Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse.

This foster care awareness campaign video, developed by Child in Family Focus Kenya (CFFK) in collaboration with Zaidi Ya Dreams and the State Department for Children Services, shines a light on the importance of foster care in Kenya and the urgent need for children to grow up in safe, loving fam

This article reports on a new analysis by the Brookings Institution estimating that over 100,000 children—most of them U.S. citizens—have been separated from a parent due to immigration detention and deportation policies under the current administration.

Desarrollada por el Grupo de Trabajo sobre Separación Familiar en colaboración con organizaciones nacionales e internacionales de confianza que trabajan directamente con familias afectadas, esta guía informativa orienta a padres, madres, cuidadores y las personas que les ayudan a comprender mejor sus derechos, conocer las opciones disponibles para la reunificación e identificar recursos que puedan contribuir a encontrar la mejor solución para cada niño, niña, adolescente y su familia.

Developed through the Family Separation Working Group in partnership with trusted national and international organizations on the front lines of supporting families, this practical guide helps parents, caregivers, and those assisting them understand their rights, learn about reunification options, and identify resources that may support them in finding the best solution for their child and family.

This large-scale study across eight African countries finds that the Parenting for Lifelong Health programme is associated with significant reductions in physical and emotional abuse, improved parenting practices, and better mental health outcomes for both caregivers and adolescents. It demonstrates that evidence-based parenting interventions can be effectively delivered at scale—even in humanitarian contexts—while maintaining strong positive impacts.

This study explores how children and youth in residential care in Australia understand the concept of “home,” finding it is often defined by the absence of harm but marked by gaps in security, control, relationships, and belonging. It concludes that institutional structures and staff instability limit meaningful experiences of home, highlighting the need for more consistent, relational, and youth-centered care environments.

For nearly 30 years, U.S. federal legislation shaping adoption has remained largely unchanged, even as expectations around privacy, youth voice, and family support have significantly evolved. This toolkit offers practical strategies and resources to modernize policy and practice, centering young people’s agency across consent, privacy, family recruitment, and post-adoption support.

With an estimated 37-42 million children on the move globally, this publication underscores the urgent need to place children’s rights at the center of migration governance. Drawing on promising practices from countries including Thailand, Jordan, Mexico and Uganda, the report highlights practical, rights-based solutions that address children’s specific vulnerabilities while promoting their protection, development and inclusion.

This introductory prevention learning package has been developed by the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action and was updated in 2026. The package is designed to strengthen participants’ overall understanding of primary prevention in Child Protection in Humanitarian Action.

This document includes statistics on looked after children for Scotland for 2024-25. It covers data on children who are looked after, young people in continuing care, and young people eligible for aftercare services.

This webi­nar pre­sent­ed by the Urban Insti­tute and spon­sored by the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion explored approach­es to strength­en­ing eval­u­a­tion in child wel­fare ser­vices in the United States to more rapid­ly and prac­ti­cal­ly doc­u­ment what works.

This study explores how kinship carers in Australia define success in statutory kinship care, emphasizing everyday experiences, emotional bonds, and a child-in-context perspective rather than traditional child protection metrics. It concludes that success is best understood through strong family relationships and belonging, calling for more family-centered support systems that prioritize carers’ and children’s lived experiences.

Family-oriented policies can accelerate social progress with family and child benefit policies stabilizing households when most vulnerable. This year's observance of the International Day of Families commemoration at the UN aims to demonstrate that engagement at international level is essential to elevate early family investment as a core social development priority. 

Families, inequality, and child well-being are deeply connected. This report, commissioned by UN DESA for the International Day of Families, examines how global and regional patterns of inequality shape family formation, early childhood and child outcomes in the context of the 2030 Agenda. It analyses trends in income inequality, poverty, fertility, under-five mortality, education and broader family well-being, showing how disadvantage can be transmitted across generations when families are not adequately supported.

After working on infectious disease epidemics with the WHO, Dr. Slutkin developed the idea that violence spreads like a contagious disease and can therefore be prevented using similar interruption strategies. In this book he demonstrates that this public health approach can reduce many forms of violence, from community and domestic violence to broader conflict and even potential war.