This article explores the existing policies and services that are prevalent in Bhutan that are enhancing childcare and protection. It also tries to bring forth the good practices that are currently in place and how it can be strengthened further by addressing challenges within the system. It also provides insight into history and evolution, and role of stakeholders involved in alternative care in the country.

This is a series of written interviews conducted with care-experienced persons from Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka who have had experience with alternative care. These interviews were published in the September 2023 issue of the Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond journal.

This article explores the steady move towards family-based care in Sri Lanka over the last decade. The country has given priority to family strengthening and strong gatekeeping mechanisms to prevent children from being unnecessarily separated from their families.

Based on the literature and observation, this article explores ideas on the alternative care of children, particularly relating to its modalities and challenges in the context of Bangladesh. The authors opine that the children’s best interest cannot be achieved when a group grows without quality care.

In this editorial, Ian Forber-Pratt, editor of this tenth anniversary edition of the Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond, gives an of alternative care in Bangladesh, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bhutan. 

This article focuses on the national efforts advancing children’s right to alternative care services in Nepal. It presents the government’s existing laws and policies in providing responsible care to children in need of special protection and for children who cannot be placed in parental care due to various reasons for family separation.

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In this paper the authors reflect on their process and offer lessons learned from engaging in participatory evaluation that may apply to the field of kinship care and across social service delivery more broadly.

Ce Guide Technique pour la Réintégration Familiale en Haïti se veut un guide pratique pour les travailleurs sociaux de l’Etat, des Organisations de la Société Civile et des ONG travaillant avec les enfants séparés de leurs familles et placés en Maison d’Enfants ou en d’autres dispositifs de protection de remplacement en Haïti.

This is a practical guide for the social workforce from the State, Civil Society Organisations and NGOs working with children separated from their families and being placed in residential care institutions or in other forms of alternative care in Haiti. This ISS publication draws on case studies and best practices from various experiences in Haiti and abroad in the field of family reintegration.

This UK-based paper presents evidence of the importance of screening looked-after children for Adverse Childhood Experiences and demonstrates that the Trauma and Adverse Life Events (TALE) is a valid and reliable tool for this purpose. Adverse and traumatic experiences were highly prevalent in this population and appeared to be closely related with children’s psychosocial wellbeing.

This U.S.-based case study provides lessons on how states and civil society strategically manage a “crisis” and discusses the implications for immigrants’ rights and vulnerabilities.

In this essay, after providing some data regarding Ukrainian families and minors who fled their country after the Russian invasion and moved to Italy, the authors will focus on the extraordinary effort made to improve reception programs, on the peculiar condition of minors who reached our country accompanied by adults who were not their parents, and finally on the experience of placing these fleeing families into Italian households.

This book chapter highlights the consequences of the recognition of the kafala related to the religious freedom of the immigrant’s family, with a special concern to intergenerational transmission of religious values and the religious education of children in host countries.

The main aim of this paper is to gain insight into the needs of youth who have left alternative care in the social welfare system. The study was conducted in Zagreb, Croatia, on a sample of sixteen young people.

This paper examines South-South migration by investigating the stay-behind families of female migrants in Bangladesh with a focus on their unaccompanied children.

This paper considers eight evaluations of an extended care scheme in England known as ‘Staying Close’. Findings suggest that for extended care projects like ‘Staying Close’ to work, any service offer designed to support the transition from residential care to independent living must be seen by the young person, the carer, and the wider social network, as a continuation of earlier efforts to build and nurture a genuinely committed relationship.

This study aimed to investigate relational outcomes of Italian emancipated foster youth across open-ended reflections about their perceptions of their relationships with the biological and foster family, with partner and peers.

This global systematic review aimed to synthesise the international evidence base for interventions targeting subjective wellbeing, mental health and suicide amongst care-experienced young people aged ≤ 25 years.

This qualitative research aimed to develop the alternative care action plan for Thailand. The method used in this study included the analysis of documents related to the alternative care situations in Thailand and the interviews where the key informants were specifically selected so that the collected data could be used to develop the alternative care action plan.

This paper presents findings from a qualitative study that explored children's and families' experiences of alternative care in Thailand. The study used arts-based methods to engage 160 children living in a range of care settings.

This paper explores the rarely examined experiences of unaccompanied refugee minors in Nairobi, Kenya.

The purpose of this article is to identify the relationships of affection that exist between children/adolescents institutionalized in the same shelter. Data collection was carried out with two sisters hosted in Brasília-Distrito Federal.

This study aimed to examine the sense of family belonging of individuals with childhood institutional care experience through personal details, institutional care, and post-institutional-care variables. This study was conducted with 313 adults with institutional care experience during childhood in Western Asia.

This paper explores how criminalisation, care experience and motherhood may intersect to produce multi-faceted structural disadvantage within both systems of care and punishment in England.

This study produced a nuanced understanding of the residential care experiences of LGBTQ+ young people in England.

This paper provides the first conceptual model for, and systematic scoping review of, callousness/unemotionality in children and young people with experiences of alternative care across the globe.

This U.S.-based study explores how common enduring relationships are among youth making the transition out of care and whether having an enduring relationship improves their outcomes in early adulthood.

This study contributes to emerging research on the self-care practices of foster carers in Australia and worldwide.

This study examines early adulthood outcomes—incarceration and teen parenthood—among youth in Wisconsin who entered foster care in early-to-middle childhood (ages 5–10).

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This article presents the  development, current status and contemporary challenges of foster care in Poland and Hungary.

This global literature review seeks to draw attention to children’s perspectives regarding contact with birth parents when in out-of-home care. By collecting and systematizing existing knowledge on children’s experiences with contact, this article aims to make it more accessible and easily applicable for further investigation.

This research sought to improve understanding of the experiences of parents with disability of Australian child protection systems, paying particular attention to the experiences of First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse parents with disability.

Using caregiver survey data, this study examined the following questions: (1) What is the prevalence of children or youth living apart (LA)? (2) What are the risk and protective factors at child and family levels that are associated with LA? (3) What is the nature of the relationships between family members among those who have experienced LA? This study re-purposed data from surveys of adoptive parents and guardians of children formerly in foster care in four U.S. states.

This article presents a scoping review of research studies completed on the mental health care needs and outcomes of care leavers in Australia from 2015 to 2021.

This global study investigates how adolescents between 12 and 18 years old in residential and non-residential youth care services perceive their quality of life on the basis of a new specific measure: the Quality of Life in Youth Services Scale (QOLYSS).

This paper assesses the legal regime governing inter-country adoption under the Ethiopian family laws by making a brief comparative study with correspondent provisions of the Chinese family law.

This paper investigates the effects of a migration control policy in mega cities after 2014 in China on parent–child separation.

This article investigates the phenomenon and practice of intercountry adoption in the Netherlands from a historical perspective by using applied history methods.

This editorial published in the August 2023 issue of the The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health Journal discusses the needs of children who are disproportionately affected by displacement. The author urges countries to consider the unique needs of displaced children—including those displaced internally, disadvantaged, or with disabilities—in all initiatives and policies, to ensure that no one is left behind ahead of the Global Refugee Forum in December 2023.

In this Health Policy, the authors map the global variation in age restrictions and durations of stay in prison with a primary caregiver. They show a broad range of approaches and provisions for the placement of children in prison.

In septembrie 2022, Changing the Way We Care (CTWWC) a lansat o inițiativă pentru a oferi sprijin economic direct în procesul de reintegrare a copiilor în familii sau plasament în servicii de îngrijire de tip familial. În baza experiențelor anterioare de reintegrare, dar și din informațiile extrase din evaluările individuale ale copiilor și familiilor, echipa CTWWC a dezvoltat o abordare standardizată și echitabilă pentru a identifica tipul și valoarea sprijinului economic direct necesar.

In September 2022, Changing the Way We Care (CTWWC) launched an initiative to provide targeted economic support to assist the reintegration of children into families or placement into family based alternative care. Informed by previous experiences in reintegration and information captured in the individual child and family assessments, the CTWWC team developed a standardized and equitable approach to identifying the type and amount of targeted economic support required.

This learning brief reports on the reflection and shares a collection of case studies collated by caseworkers in Kenya. Using Most Significant Change Storytelling, the caseworkers, supervisors and program managers selected and discussed stories from their work. They discussed what lessons these stories and the discussion drew out about the case management practice. The each of the stories illustrates one or more of the case management steps.

Acest studiu analizează serviciile sociale de tip familial existente în Republica Moldova: Asistența parentală profesionistă (APP) și Casele de copii de tip familial (CCTF), cu scopul de a identifica argumente privind unificarea celor două servicii de îngrijire de tip familial APP/CCTF din perspectiva calității îngrijirii copiilor și a interesului superior al copiilor. Studiul include o analiză comparativă a cadrului de reglementare a serviciilor familiale alternative și recomandări privind posibilitatea și fezabilitatea unificării serviciilor sociale. Studiul a concluzionat faptul că, pentru a îmbunătăți calitatea și accesul la serviciile de îngrijire de tip familial pentru copiii aflați în situații de risc, se recomandă unificarea serviciilor APP și CCTF, revizuirea cadrului juridic al serviciului APP și luarea în considerare a celor mai pozitive aspecte ale ambelor servicii.