This is the monthly update of the Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Learning Platform published in February 2024. 

Amy and Ano are twins, but just after they were born they were taken from their mother and sold to separate families.They found out about each other by chance and as they delved into their past, they realised thousands of babies in Georgia were stolen from hospitals and sold for adoption, some as recently as 2005. Now they want answers.

This advocacy brief provides an overview of promising practices and lessons learned to end child immigration detention in the U.S. and sets out a range of policy actions needed to scale up efforts to end this form of violence.

Many young orphans in Zimbabwe grow up in residential care facilities, but according to governmental policies and literature in this field, these children should be transitioned to extended families to ensure optimal development. This article provides empirically derived insights to the inner experiences of the transition processes of five young orphans and their extended family members, two residential care administrators, and one social worker.

Norwegian youth in out-of-home care move three times as frequently as their peers. Such placement instability is linked to negative outcomes in terms of social attachment, well-being, educational achievements, health, and future opportunities. Norway implemented a new child welfare service reform in 2022 that increased the municipalities responsibilities for out-of-home care. This study evaluates how the implemented measures affect the number of moves within out-of-home care in Trøndelag county. Norway.

Shared parenting, when adults collaborate in childrearing, is a practice of interest for children in out-of-home care. Yet, little is known about its feasibility and outcomes for kinship families who have preexisting relationships with birth parents. This article shares qualitative results from focus groups that explored participants’ experiences and attitudes toward shared parenting in the U.S.

This is a report about the Parental Rights in Prison Project (PRiP) based in Wales and England aimed at supporting incarcerated parents who wished to sustain their relationship with their children who are in the care of the local authority, care of family and significant others or adopted and to provide them with legal advice and support around their rights as parents. 

The aim of this study was to examine whether different subtypes of homelessness risk exist among young people transitioning from care in Australia and whether these trajectories of homelessness are associated with mental health and substance use disorders.

This chapter, which is part of the "Handbook of Human Mobility and Migration" reviews the literature on child migration, highlighting how children compare from adults in their migratory aspirations and migration decision-making, as well as in their experiences in receiving countries in the European and US contexts, where groups of children such as unaccompanied minors benefit from humanitarian protections unavailable to adults.

This chapter is part of the "Research Handbook on Migration, Gender, and COVID-19" and explores the gender and youth dimensions of return from GCC States to the East Africa subregion, focusing on three countries: Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia.

This longitudinal study uses a causal effect model to examine, through decomposition, the relationship between care environment and HIV risk factors in orphaned and separated adolescents and youths (OSAY) in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya; considering resilience, social, peer, or family support, volunteering, or having one’s material needs met as potential mediators. The authors analysed survey responses from 1105 OSAY age 10–26 living in Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCI) (orphanages) and family-based care settings (FBS).

The aim of this research was to gain insight into the youth resilience factors promoting a successful transition to an independent life after living in alternative care in Croatia. The study was conducted using semi-structured interviews with eight young people who had experience living in alternative care and showed successful adaptation to an independent life.

This report presents findings from qualitative interviews conducted with English-speaking Latino individuals from the United States who experienced parental deportation between the ages of 6 and 17 years old. They offer suggestions about what they needed following their loss as a child. By understanding what children need in these moments of crisis, practitioners, providers, and others are better prepared to address this form of complex childhood adversity.

The Pathways of Care Longitudinal Study (POCLS) is the first large-scale prospective longitudinal study of children and young people in out-of-home care in Australia. It includes a cohort of all 4126 children and young people (age 0 to 17 years) who entered out-of-home care for the first time over an 18-month period from May 2010 to October 2011 in New South Wales, with a focus on 2828 of these children with final court orders.

This article outlines differing perspectives on orphanage tourism and volunteering from the last decade of research. It examines the contexts in which orphanage tourism occurs and outlines the drivers for this form of tourism. In addition, it discusses the implications of orphanage tourism for children including impacts on child agency, child rights, child development, child protection, and child trafficking and exploitation.

This chapter identifies some (but not all) of the common adversities that care-experienced young people often face living in England inclusive of changes in accommodation and placement instability, insecure relationships, poor mental health, disrupted education, substance misuse, and poverty in order to help educators understand the myriad of life challenges facing those with care experience.

The authors explore approaches, challenges, solutions, and recommendations offered by child welfare workers in Canada on remote communication with children/youth regarding safety and on managing parent–child access during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This article explores how the monitoring of foster homes in Norway is experienced by children and youths who have been exposed to what they consider abusive behaviour by foster parents. Using a thematic narrative theoretical framework, the article shows that a common narrative in the youths’ accounts is a story of mistrust towards social workers and monitoring officers, which relates to a general mistrust towards the child welfare service.

Young people who age out of state care are at risk of a range of negative outcomes. In England, national data provides only five indicators of care leavers’ lives and there are no measures of how young people themselves feel about their transition to adulthood. To fill this gap a new survey to measure subjective wellbeing was coproduced with 31 care leavers. The survey was then distributed by 21 local authorities and completed by 1804 care leavers.

This qualitative study explores the emotional and social experiences of 10 children, aged 6–11, residing in foster care in Italy before adoption for almost three years. Through semi-structured interviews, the study underlined the needs and expectations of these children, highlighting the necessity for a deeper reflection on the role of foster homes as nurturing and educational communities.

This article analyzes ethical issues arising in transreligious foster care placements in relation to foster children’s needs regarding religious socialization and identification. Applying Urban Walker’s expressive-collaborative framework to 30 qualitative interviews with foster parents, foster children, parents, and professionals, the authors elaborate and apply a three-level reflection on Christian foster parents’ ethics of care in everyday practice of foster care.

Group climate in residential youth care is considered to be essential for treatment of youth and young adults. Various instruments exist to measure quality of living group climate, but some are lengthy, use complicated wording, which make them difficult to fill out by youth and individuals with a mild intellectual disability. The present study based in the Netherlands describes the development and rationale for the Group Climate Instrument—Revised (GCI-R).

This article analyses the search strategies of first families in Bolivia contesting the separation of their children through transnational adoption. These first parents’ claims to visibility and acknowledgement have remained largely ignored by adoption policy and scholarship, historically privileging the perspectives of actors in adoptive countries, such as adoptive parents and adoption professionals.

Family-centred practice (FCP) has been suggested as a best practice for treating youth with emotional and behavioural difficulties in residential care. In this preregistered global systematic review, the authors examined how FCP is operationalized and measured in residential youth care and which family outcomes are associated with FCP.

This article looks at the role of the State of India in ensuring the wellbeing of those it has the responsibility to protect. These include people who have suffered violence, indignity, hunger and life-threatening circumstances. The five-year planning of state and district plans have utilised more resources than it has produced outcomes and output. In this article the authors have compiled lessons learned from strategies that can enable duty holders to emerge as more responsible actors during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

This is a corporal punishment country report for Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, the Law on Protection of Child Rights 2019 prohibits corporal punishment in alternative care settings and in penal institutions.

This is a corporal punishment country report for Guinea-Bissau. While prohibition of corporal punishment is still to be achieved in the home and day care, the Child Protection Code 2021 of Guinea-Bissau prohibits corporal punishment in alternative care settings, schools and in penal institutions.

The ability to have children is a special blessing from God to man since creation (Gen. 1:28). Hence Jesus’ recognition of children as heirs of God’s Kingdom.

This is a summary of every private residential care facility in the Chiang Rai Province of Thailand, including institutional care homes, children’s homes, and residential schools. This summary provides an extensive and useful data set for those interested in the reform of private children's homes.

This is a summary of children's homes in the Chiang Mai Province of Thailand over the last 1.5 years. The research team visited a total of 371 private children's homes. This summary provides an extensive and useful data set for those interested in the reform of private children's homes.

Families First Project is a program initiated by Save the Children in Indonesia in collaboration with the Indonesian Government to promote a safe family environment for raising and caring for children, either in their own families or in family and community-based care alternatives.

This is a feasibility and pilot evaluation of the Transition Hub -- a multi-disciplinary team which aims to support young people aged 11 to 17 who are making the transition into care or experiencing a placement transition in England. The feasibility phase explored the feasibility of delivery and aimed to provide lessons for further research. The pilot phase examined whether the Transition Hub might evidence promise on desired outcomes and sought to offer further learning about delivery and acceptability.

Since 24 February, 7.5 million children from Ukraine1 have been victims of the largest human displacement crisis in the world today, with lasting consequences for generations to come.

The dramatic escalation of war in Ukraine in February 2022 has affected every person in the country.

This study aims to address a gap in migration research, by developing a holistic and gender-specific understanding of the migratory patterns and experiences of girls in, through, and to North Africa. To do so, the research team employed a qualitative research approach, informed by child- and gender-sensitive practices, to collect data from girls and boys in Italy, Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia.

This Toolkit builds on the outcomes of an international thematic workshop on addressing the needs of migrant children at borders, consolidated with IOM best practices and additional research inputs.

Drawing on data generated through a substantial ethnography in one secure children's home in England, this paper uses Goffman's (1961) theorising as a conceptual lens to view the institution.

This report explores, through responses to an online survey, interviews and focus groups, the opportunities, challenges, barriers and facilitators that members of the workforce identify as factors which bring about high quality experiences and outcomes for children, young people and families using services; close multi-agency working between practitioners across different services; continuity of support when young people transition to adult services; high quality support for the workforce and transformational change in services.

Mapping integration and outcomes in Scotland: A statistical analysis investigated if the most recent major structural reform of health and social care services to take place in Scotland has had an impact on outcomes for children, young people and families.

Case studies of transformational reform programmes examined a range of approaches to the delivery of children’s services to better understand the evidence regarding systems-level integration between children’s social work/social care with health services and/or adult social care.

Strand 1: Rapid Evidence Review reviewed existing published national and international research evidence focused on better understanding the evidence associated with different models of integration of children’s services with health and/or adult social care services in high income countries, as defined by the World Bank.

The goal of this study was to improve the understanding of current children’s services structures and delivery models in Scotland and how services can best support the needs of children, young people and their families. The research looked at how services are provided and configured in Scotland and drew on a range of international evidence too.

Family for Every Child launched its global inter-agency guidance on supporting kinship care aimed at policy makers and programme managers during this webinar on 1 February 2024.

In this conversation moderated by Gillian Huebner, executive director of the Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues at Georgetown University, panelists outline Ukrainian efforts to protect its children and the measures international partners can take to support an effective response to the impact of Russia’s policies of aggression on Ukraine’s future.

The Visioning for Prevention infographic illustrates what a family-serving, prevention-focused system looks like, making clear the benefits of becoming that system.

See what an integrated, comprehensive, prevention-focused approach looks like along a three-tiered prevention continuum.
 

Read about the value of collaboration as the key to prevention, safety, and long-term stability for children and families.