This thesis explores the experiences and meanings that are attributed to kinship care by caregivers, young people of African descent, and social workers.

The aim of this study was to investigate how workers within Child Protective Services (CPS) systems in Colorado and the Netherlands measure and perceive the effectiveness of their CPS system.

This analysis examines both historical and contemporary approaches to addressing religion and race in child welfare policy and practice, with a particular focus on adolescent youth.

This study evaluated the health service needs of left-behind children ages 3-5 years old in Hunan Province, China.

The aims of this study were to systematically evaluate and comparatively analyse the mental health status of left‐behind children (LBC) in China and to provide a scientific basis for mental intervention and healthy education for LBC.

The First International Conference of the Department of Social Work, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, with the theme “Emerging and Contemporary Social Issues: The place of Social Work Education and Practice in Nigeria” was held 10-13 September 2018 and included 96 oral presentations of papers by delegates from across the country. Several papers focused on illegal adoptions of children in Nigeria and the role of social workers in addressing this practice.

This article by staff attorney for family law and child welfare at the Virginia Poverty Law Center's Center for Family Advocacy, Valerie L’Herrou, outlines and analyses several new bills introduced by the Virginia General Assembly in 2018 and their impacts on young people aging out of the foster care system and family reintegration.

This study investigated out-of-home placements in Finland among children with a biological mother having schizophrenia, and their relation to maternal characteristics and adverse perinatal health outcomes of the offspring.

This study explored the personal self-care practices of foster parents in one southeastern state in the US.

This exploratory, qualitative, multi-case study sought to understand, from the perspective of successful foster alumni college students, the role and influence of family members.

Building on discourse analyses of custody deprivation cases, the authors of this paper call for greater understanding of how disability intersects with parenting and the need for an improved support system.

This study compared adolescents in residential care (RC) in Portugal, with a Portuguese community sample on the incidence of mental health problems and psychosocial skills, explored gender differences and the relationships between mental health problems and psychosocial competencies.

This study examined the impact of the model of professional childcare in a three-year project involving fifty-three children and young people and their carers in local-authority children’s homes on two UK areas (Northern and Southern England).

This book takes readers on a journey that spans three decades and five continents, describing the work of SFAC to keep children in their families and communities or to find safe alternatives where this is not possible.

This paper from the Institutionalised Children: Explorations and Beyond Special Issue on Aftercare provides an insight into the lives of two care leavers to understand their experiences in the world outside care. It brings out significant recommendations for reforms in aftercare policies for children leaving care.

This study from the Institutionalised Children: Explorations and Beyond Special Issue on Aftercare describes the mental health outcomes and transition experiences of a group of young adults who are currently transitioning (aftercare) or have already transitioned (alumni) out of a residential care organisation for orphaned and separated children (OSC) in New Delhi, India.

This study from the Institutionalised Children: Explorations and Beyond Special Issue on Aftercare was conducted on 47 young adults who had grown up in various government and non-government child care institutions of New Delhi, India and the aftercare services they did or did not receive. The analysis revealed that the existing aftercare programmes are ill-equipped to prepare Out-of-Home Care (OHC) youth to transition from alternative care to independent living.

This study from the Institutionalised Children: Explorations and Beyond Special Issue on Aftercare is aimed at studying the concept of aftercare from the prism of human rights and the international framework in context of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN resolution, Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children. Furthermore, the research is aimed at analysing the legal provisions and standards provided within the Indian legal system and how far it is attuned to the international standards.

This article from the Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond Special Issue on Aftercare explores the outcomes for young people who have transitioned out of alternative care and into independent living in Sri Lanka and the need for policy changes to better meet their needs.

This issue of the ICEB journal is a special edition on the aftercare concerns of young adults who leave the care of agencies and embark on a journey of their own.

The main objective of this study is to explore, from a bottom-up perspective, the moderating effect of an experienced happiness indicator (OHS) and the daily-life activities shared between caregivers and adolescents in the residential care system in Peru.

This volume is an effort to highlight best practices for children without parental care.

This article describes Indonesia's PKSA/Child Welfare Program, including its successes and drawbacks, and makes recommendations for further implementation.

The present study is part of a knowledge translation project in collaboration with local CWS with the aim to develop, implement, and evaluate Enhanced Academic Support (EAS) for primary school children in Child Welfare Services (CWS) in Norway.

This article reports a research study in Victoria, Australia, that explored nonfamilial kinship care through analysis of administrative data, interviews with young people and carers, and focus groups with kinship care support workers.

This paper paves the way to ensuring that challenges faced by informal caregivers are addressed in a manner that will make them more supportive to orphans.

This report is divided into two parts. Part A focuses on the dangers that occur at Pennsylvania’s residential facilities when the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services (“PA-DHS”) fails to provide meaningful oversight. Part B provides background on child residents’ educational rights, details the inferior education that children at these residential facilities receive, especially those children with disabilities, and the devastating consequences.

This report is based on the largest ever national survey of kinship carers. It explores the experience of kinship families, and draws comparison with findings from a 2010 Survey.

This report presents findings from the first survey focussing on the challenges faced by kinship carers in the UK in bringing up children and their experience of discrimination and stigma. 

In this podcast episode, University of Melbourne researcher Dr. Meredith Kiraly joins Patricia Karvelas in The Drawing Room along with Nic, who is the full-time carer of her 2 year old nephew.

‘Monique's early childhood was the sort of experience that might have broken most kids. Now 19, she found a loving home with a relative when she was nine. It's called kinship care, and it's the fastest growing form of care for children who can't live at home.’

This guide aims to provide social workers with a clear framework for undertaking preliminary assessments of family and friends.

This article is an attempt to analyse and describe the process of change in child substitute care that has taken place since the re-independence of Estonia in 1991.

National organizations working on behalf of kinship families have several exciting resources to share with the field. This article from the Child Law Practice Today July/August 2017 Issue on Kinship Care highlights some of those resources.

This article from the Child Law Practice Today July/August 2017 Issue on Kinship Care outlines policy and practice tips for supporting grandparents raising grandchildren due to the current opioid and heroin epidemic in the US.

In this article from the Child Law Practice Today July/August 2017 Issue on Kinship Care, Los Angeles Judge Michael Nash, Ret. shares court and agency strategies to engage and support relatives for children and families involved in the child welfare system in the US.

Providing relative caregivers the same financial benefits and supports as nonrelative foster caregivers is the focus of ongoing US federal litigation described in this article from the Child Law Practice Today July/August 2017 Issue on Kinship Care. The litigation addresses the equitable treatment of relatives who care for children in the child welfare system.

This article from the Child Law Practice Today July/August 2017 Issue on Kinship Care describes a national campaign launched by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, with other national stakeholders, to transform foster parenting by changing the way systems and communities partner with foster parents to help children stay safe, heal, and thrive in their own families and communities. The article highlights the considerations identified by kinship foster families as fundamental to feeling supported by child welfare systems and providing the best possible care.

This article from the Child Law Practice Today July/August 2017 Issue on Kinship Care summarizes seven steps to create a kin-first culture—one in which child welfare stakeholders consistently promote kinship placement, help children in foster care maintain connections with their families, and tailor services and supports to the needs of kinship foster families.

This article from the Child Law Practice Today July/August 2017 Issue on Kinship Care explores kinship care in the US, including its benefits to children and families.

This issue focuses on the role of kin and relatives as permanency resources for children in the child welfare system.

In addition to discussing the legal implications of immigration status on foster placements, this article provides promising practices and other tools for those who work closely with immigrant caregivers in the child welfare system.

Within the context of kinship care, the main objectives of this work are to study the characteristics of contact between foster children and their birth parents, and their relationship with key variables of fostering, the children and their kinship caregivers.

This article presents a comprehensive, narrative review of international, research literature on informal, kinship care.

This systematic review evaluated the effect of kinship care placement compared to foster care placement on the safety, permanency, and well-being of children removed from the home for maltreatment.

This article examines whether and how felt caregiver burden influences the reported propensity of caregivers to want to adopt the children in their care.

This study from the Special Issue on Kinship Care of the Child Welfare Journal examined the impact of a kinship supports intervention implemented in 16 children services agencies in the US.

This paper from the Special Issue on Kinship Care of the Child Welfare Journal discusses a three-phased service model assessed using Family Group Decision Making (FGDM) conferences with informal kinship caregivers and their families.

In this empirical analysis of kinship caregivers and children from the Special Issue on Kinship Care of the Child Welfare Journal, researchers sought to determine the protective factors that mediate against risks and produce optimal levels of child well-being for children being cared for by kinship caregivers in the US.