Despite Hungary signing on to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), there has been no significant change in the number of people with disabilities in Hungary who are placed in institutions. Mass institutionalisation continues to be the predominant form of care for people--including many children--with mental health issues and intellectual disabilities. 

The Deinstitutionalization Toolkit is designed to provide all those interested in institutional closures and expanded community living opportunities for people with intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities (ID/DD) with information, strategies, state data, and case studies that can facilitate closure and build community capacity to serve more people with ID/DD in the community. It covers topics such as building a broad-based coalition, understanding and working within the political environment, creating a community system of care, and relevant laws, policies, and court decisions.

This report documents Ukraine’s Soviet-era system of orphanages and other institutions for children with disabilities. The report details the violence, exploitation, and other human rights violations that are frequently committed against these children. It also shows how families who wish to keep their children with disabilities at home are often forced to institutionalize them as a result of lack of support. 

This document reports on an Institutional Learning Process that has critically analysed the impact and effectiveness of Terre des hommes’ (Tdh) engagement in Albania over the last 14 years. It looks at the role Tdh has played in the emergence of a State Child Protection System (CPS) in Albania. 

The purpose of the toolkit is to assist all public authorities in Europe involved in the programming and implementation of EU Structural Funds (and other relevant funds) to make decisions which will help to improve the lives of more than a million European citizens currently living in institutional care. The toolkit aims to explain how EU funds can support national, regional and local authorities in designing and implementing structural reforms to develop quality family-based and community-based alternatives. The toolkit explicitly deals with the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), but it aims to apply also to the programming and implementation of the European Agricultural and Rural Development Fund (EARDF) and the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance (IPA). 

This report was written by Keetie Roelen and Helen Karki Chettri from the Centre for Social Protection (CSP) at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), with inputs and support from Family for Every Child and Challenging Heights, Ghana. The report investigates the links between child wellbeing, children’s care, family cohesion and the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty Programme (LEAP), a national social protection scheme in Ghana which aims to reduce extreme poverty in the country and is centred on providing cash transfers to the most vulnerable.

This fact sheet summarizes a qualitative research study conducted by the National Adoption Coalition South Africa (NACSA) that explored child abandonment and adoption in the context of African ancestral beliefs in urban South Africa. The goal of this one-year study was to better understand the growing practice of child abandonment and declining adoption rates in South Africa.

The United Nations, Department for Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social Policy and Development released the Final Report of the Expert Group Meeting (EGM) on "Family Policy Development: Achievements and Challenges” which was produced after the 14-15 May 2015 EGM. The meeting focused on changing families, family law reforms, violence in the family and their impact on family policy development.

A press release from the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India recapped a series of new initiatives by the Ministry during 2015. The achievements relevant to children’s care are briefly described below and include the launch of the flagship programme Beti Bachao Beto Padhao for protection of the girl child; several initiatives to track, restore, and rehabilitate missing children; and adoption reforms and a new foster care system.

In this TED talk, pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains how childhood trauma--such as abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse--has real, tangible effects on the development of the child's brain. Children who have experienced high levels of trauma and adverse childhood experiences are at triple the risk for heart disease and lung cancer. This is because of the body's stress response system, which is activated repeatedly during childhood by the adversity. 

This study carried out in the United States used a lens of family stress theory to explore adoptive parents’ responses to unexpected characteristics of their children. 

On July 27–29, 2015, the Forum on Investing in Young Children Globally, in partnership with the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences, held a workshop in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to examine topics related to supporting family and community investments in young children globally. 

This handbook authored by the World Health Organization Europe and Liverpool John Moores University – based on a series of interviews with the world's leading experts on preventing child maltreatment – provides practical information to policy-makers, practitioners and others on implementing prevention programmes. The handbook describes key principles for selecting and delivering programmes, and important practical considerations, including resources and technical support. 

Retrak has released a literature review on independent living programmes in an effort to understand the needs of young people coming of age on the streets.

To better understand the impact of donor funding, Lumos is conducting a five-part research study to examine the role of donors across a variety of sectors in propagating, supporting or ending the institutionalization of children. This report on US government funding is the first in the series. 

In this article, a Human Rights Watch researcher describes her personal experiences meeting adults and children in the Western Balkans who have spent their lives hidden away in institutions because they have a disability. 

On 10 December 2015, the Peruvian Congress approved by a near unanimous vote the Law prohibiting the use of physical and other humiliating punishment against children and adolescents (“Ley que prohibie el uso del castigo físico y humillante contra los niños, niñas y adolescents”). 

In this short video, BBC News interviews Gramboute Ibrahima, a local social worker who helps child trafficking victims in Abengourou, Ivory Coast. His organisation, CREER, has opened the region's first centre to help rehabilitate trafficked children. Almost every country in the world is affected by human trafficking. Children are particularly at risk, often sold across borders to work in brothels or on farms. 

This article explores how the demand for orphanage tourism, whether from volunteers or holidaymakers visiting or donating, can fuel child trafficking and abuse. 

This report is a follow up to HRW/Asia's publication of "Death By Default" on January 7, 1996, which found that most orphaned or abandoned children in China die within one year of their admittance to state-run orphanages and that the government does little or nothing to prevent this loss of life—despite the modest economic cost of so doing. 

This report is the product of a year-long investigation and collaboration between Disability Rights International (DRI) and the Comisión Mexicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos (CMDPDH).  From August 2009 through September 2010, DRI and the CMDPDH investigated psychiatric institutions, orphanages, shelters, and other public facilities that house children and adults with disabilities. 

This petition was submitted to the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights (IACHR) by Disability Rights International and the Human Rights Office of the Arch-Bishop of Guatemala requesting precautionary measures, in accordance with article 25 of the IACHR rules of procedure, on behalf 334 children and adults with disabilities detained at the National Mental Health Hospital in Guatemala City (“Federico Mora” hospital). The petition documents the serious risks of physical and psychological harm of those detained at Federico Mora.

This report is the product of an investigation by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) into the human rights abuses of children and young adults with mental disabilities residing at the Judge Rotenberg Center (JRC) (formerly known as the Behavior Research Institute) in Canton, Massachusetts in the United States. This report is an urgent appeal to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture or other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, by MDRI. The report documents many human rights abuses at JRC, including the intentional infliction of severe pain on children by the use of electric shock and longterm restraint.

This report is the product of an investigation spanning four years by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) into the human rights abuses perpetrated against institutionalized children and adults in Serbia. From July 2003 to August 2007, MDRI documented a broad array of human rights violations against people with disabilities, segregated from society and forced to live out their lives in institutions. 

This report is the product of an 18-month investigation by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) into the human rights abuses of children with disabilities in Romania. This report documents a broad range of atrocious conditions for children with disabilities inside Romania’s institutions. While Romania has reduced its orphanage population and created foster care placements for many children, the reforms have left behind children with disabilities. This report documents serious human rights violations against children with disabilities in an institution for babies and in adult facilities. 

This report describes the findings of a two-year investigation in Turkey by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) and exposes the human rights abuses perpetrated against children and adults with mental disabilities. Locked away and out of public view, people with psychiatric disorders as well as people with intellectual disabilities are subjected to treatment practices that are tantamount to torture. Inhuman and degrading conditions of confinement are widespread throughout the Turkish mental health system. 

The South African Child Gauge is the only publication in the country that provides an annual snap-shot of the status of South Africa’s children.

Retrak has published new Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) on street outreach, which is the beginning of its relationship building with children on the streets and the start of them finding a way back to family care. 

ISS, with support from UNICEF Viet Nam and MOLISA, undertook research on child abandonment and relinquishment in 2011 and 2012, as part of its follow up technical support to Viet Nam in overhauling its adoption system.

This paper explores the effects of remittance receipt on child labour in an African context.