This study examined the socioeconomic and demographic drivers of willingness to foster non-kin children among mothers in Nigeria. The findings of this study provide implications for research, social work practice, and education in Nigeria and Africa.
This study explored the lived experiences of mothers/fathers who secretly abandoned their children in Ethiopia.
The Bucharest Early Intervention Project is the first randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care. The authors synthesized data from nearly 20 years of assessments of the trial to determine the overall intervention effect size across time points and developmental domains. The goal was to quantify the overall effect of the foster care intervention on children’s outcomes and examine sources of variation in this effect, including domain, age, and sex assigned at birth.
This article looks at the strategies foster care workers employ when dealing with worldview differences between a foster family and the birth family reviewing examples from the Netherlands, Denmark and the US.
This paper is a first approach to pursuing questions of subjectification and objectification in the context of children and youth growing up in care settings in Switzerland.
This article examines the effects of removing children to out-of-home settings both for reasons of child abuse and/or neglect and due to custody disputes on personal, familial and social aspects of the lives of Arab mothers in East Jerusalem.
This US-based study examined youth’s perspective of the quality of care and experiences in residential group care. This study was approved by an Institutional Review Board. Data were collected as part of a larger statewide pilot of the Quality Standards Assessment (QSA).
This conceptual article describes how, in terms of organization theories, shifts in the chronological transition to adulthood produce “weak” constellations of participation during the process of leaving care. The authors highlight the different degrees of participation by those leaving care and the ways in which it is expressed.
The objective of this global study was to review the current literature regarding PTSD in unaccompanied refugee minors (URM). The authors concluded that the high levels of mental health problems experienced in URM are due to exposure to traumatic experiences, separation from parents, and lack of social support.
This study analyzes the sequential relationships between exposure to adverse childhood experiences, trauma-related symptoms, psychological maladjustment, and the perception of group climate and peer interactions for those in out-of-home placements in Spain.
This study aimed to describe the perception of caregivers and the role of professionals in the process of family reintegration and adoption of children and adolescents with disabilities in a host institution in Belém/PA, Brazil.
To ensure a significant improvement in service delivery to children and their families, and specifically to the successful reintegration of children from residential care into families and communities, a case management approach, standard operating procedures (SOPs) and tools were required to support state and non-state service providers to standardize the way they promoted family care. This short insight document describes how the case management package was developed and rolled out.
The objective of this webinar was to present the best practices learnt in the implementation of the foster care system as an alternative to limited child care institutions for children on the move in The Gambia.
India has made remarkable progress toward ending child marriage according to this new UNICEF report, though this country remains home to the largest number of child brides worldwide. Despite advancements on many fronts, the rate of decline is not sufficient to reach the target of eliminating the practice by 2030, as set out in the Sustainable Development Goals.
In the U.S., youth in foster care are nearly twice as likely as war veterans to suffer from PTSD. Placed in foster care at just 11 months old, 2023 Audacious Project grantee Sixto Cancel experienced the faults of the system firsthand. Now, he's the founder of Think of Us, an organization working to reform child welfare by centering kinship care, or placing a child with an extended family member or a familiar adult. Learn more about his plan to help thousands of kids searching for a loving home with one simple, systemic switch.
National Network for Children (NNC) released its monitoring Report Card 2023 which evaluates the progress of Bulgarian state care institutions in eight areas – Child participation, Child Welfare, Family Environment and Alternative care, Protection from all forms of Violence, Child Justice, Early Childhood Development, Child Health, Education, Sport, Culture and Leisure.
This is the fourth webinar in the Family for Every Child's kinship care learning series which explored the different types of kinship caregivers (e.g. grandparents, siblings, aunts and uncles, male kinship carers, friends of the family) and how their different characteristics impact the risk and support needs of kinship care placements.
This webinar provided an opportunity for the care community to share experiences on the transformation of residential care.
This webinar discusses new resources from Youth Thrive that you can use in your organization every day to help young people build their protective and promotive factors. Whether you are already working with youth, or looking to expand the reach of your Strengthening Families efforts.
The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action , with the support of the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies, conducted participatory research to explore the impact of COVID-19 related school closures on children and young people in three humanitarian settings: Lebanon, Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia.
Olesea, a 24-year old from Moldova with care experience, shares her story of transitioning from a child care institution to foster care.
This webinar was organized by India Alternative Care Network (IACN) in association with Miracle Foundation India, on April 28, 2023, with the objective to understand gatekeeping, it's components, tools, mechanisms, stakeholders and their role in gatekeeping and learning some promising practices at the primary and secondary levels of gatekeeping.
The Hope for Homes team in Rwanda helps communities become more inclusive for children with disabilities.
Accurate and reliable data on children living in residential care institutions are essential. However, these children are not identified through household surveys and, as a result, are not typically included in official national statistics on key indicators of child well-being. This includes indicators that comprise global monitoring frameworks, such as the Sustainable Development Goals. To help address this data gap, UNICEF has developed the first-ever comprehensive package to collect data on children living in residential care settings. Claudia Cappa, Senior Adviser for Statistics and Monitoring, Data and Analytics Section, DAPM/UNICEF HQ, explains more.
Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, CHIP President, discusses the measures in place to ensure that the many children that crossed the Polish/Ukraine border alone travelled with identity documents that would allow them to access child protection measures as they proceed on their journey.
The Ukraine Recovery Conference 2023 focussed on action to help Ukraine build back better, greener and as a more resilient and prosperous European nation. In particular, URC 2023 aimed to generate greater momentum on the role of the private sector – and the reforms required to drive investment – as essential elements for Ukraine’s long-term recovery.
This statement was released by the Working Group on Orphanage Trafficking and Exploitation -- a global coalition of Members of Parliament, government leaders, survivor leaders, and key stakeholders committed to combatting orphanage trafficking and the exploitation through raising awareness and identifying, creating, and implementing tools that curb the demand for orphanage trafficking and stop the exploitation of children in residential care settings, including orphanages. The Working group aims to raise awareness and combat orphanage trafficking at the policy level globally.
This introductory learning module has been developed by the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action. The learning module is designed to strengthen participants' overall understanding of prevention related elements from the UASC Handbook and Toolkit and the ACE Toolkit.
This IACN report outlines the importance of families for the emotional, physical, and cognitive growth of children. The authors discuss that all efforts should be made to provide family-based care to children without parental care, and institutionalisation should be a measure of last resort for the optimum development of children. The report draws on the experiences of eight families in kinship care arrangements and the children placed with them.
The focus of this document is to support, inform and empower social workers across the UK in their ongoing practice and consideration of issues that arise in relation to people arriving and staying under the UK Ukraine visa schemes.
Dainius Puras, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to physical and mental health (2014 to 2020) and CHIP Special Advisor, discusses the importance of identity rights from a non-legal perspective.
UNICEF's new "How Many" tool – currently in beta – helps you ask the right questions and makes the art of searching easier when searching for answers to some of the most pressing challenges faced by children.
This webinar looked at ways to raise awareness among the general public on the right to independent living and the harm of institutionalisation for the entire society.
During this webinar, participants explored the dynamics of migrant child labor in the United States. Will efforts to “crack down” on child labor stop exploitation? How will forthcoming changes to U.S. asylum processes impact migrant children and their livelihoods? Most importantly, what do migrant youth have to say about their experiences?
This document includes useful graphic information, ‘analysing CRC Committee recommendations on the child’s right to nationality and the protection of stateless children, capturing a snapshot of progressive engagement by the Committee on these issues between 2010-2020’. The factsheet is a brief and very useful document for all actors wishing to engage with the CRC Committee.
This study comprises ‘multiple elements including practical tips on how to meaningfully engage with the Committee on the Rights of the Child on childhood statelessness, complemented by a checklist, template and guidance note on how to make submissions’.
Cette boîte à outils fournit aux Autorités centrales un modèle sur la manière dont elles pourraient répondre aux demandes des victimes d'adoptions illégales et illicites.
This toolkit provides Central Authorities with a template for how they could respond to queries from victims of illegal and illicit adoptions.
During this UNICEF ESARO webinar presenters share findings from research on care leavers in Kenya, and explore the peer-to-peer methods used in this research. The Government of Kenya also explains why this research was conducted and how it will be used.
This 5th webinar of the Family for Every Child Kinship Care learning series looked at the different ways in which kinship carers themselves support kinship care. Kinship Care Ireland shared how the kinship caregivers they are working with are self-advocating for greater recognition for kinship care.
This Children and Youth Services Review study performed a systematic review of research on training programs aiming the fostering of emotional and mental health in residential youth care. A systematic search was conducted in nine digital databases and other sources (websites, relevant journals, reference lists of included articles and relevant reviews), for publications from 1980 to 2021.
This study utilized a large sample of treatment-seeking children across Ontario to compare children living with a foster family to non-foster children, across a number of psychosocial, care needs, and demographic variables.
The Transform Africa Alliance, with representation from Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Madagascar and Mozambique, calls upon the Sudanese Government, humanitarian actors and the international community to work together to map out the whereabouts and needs of all children living in institutions across Sudan and provide them with vital humanitarian assistance.
This article examines the intersections of orphanage trafficking, a form of child trafficking and modern slavery, and the sale and sexual exploitation of children with reference to the Sustainable Development Goals. It outlines the contextual challenges of these intersections highlighting the special protection needs of children residing in institutions and outlines how orphanage tourism and funding undermine care reform efforts of national authorities.
This report aims to synthesize recent evidence concerning the experiences and needs of children affected by human mobility in Latin America and the Caribbean, and on how far programmes and policies are meeting those needs. It is motivated by a desire on the part of the United Nations Children’s Fund Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office (UNICEF LACRO) to promote proven responses to human mobility that genuinely respond to the needs of children and families: in their communities of origin, in transit, as they settle in new countries, or if they return to their countries of origin.
This is an introduction to the training series produced by Child's i Foundation and No Limit Generation and focuses on four key areas: trauma and stress, depression and suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and loss and grief.
This new body of research from Chapin Hall, a research and policy center that focuses on child welfare and family well-being at the University of Chicago, finds that material hardship increases the risk for child welfare involvement due to neglect and abuse, and when families are given cash assistance, child welfare involvement is reduced.
This document serves as a guiding framework for those involved in the development of comprehensive national Care Systems as a pillar of social protection in Latin American and the Caribbean. The authors believe that these systems should be designed from a human rights perspective, with particular emphasis on mainstreaming the gender perspective to achieve care models co-responsible between the State, the market, the community, and families, and between men and women.
The project aims to make children and young people active agents in creating a safe environment for themselves and their peers, and to enable professionals who work with and care for children and young people to respond appropriately to peer violence amongst them.
In this policy brief published by Eurochild and UNICEF, researchers assess the 20 available European Child Guarantee National Action Plans (NAPs) and issue recommendations to examine their coverage of children in alternative care.
