This report introduces the limitations of orphanages, the importance of caring for children in families, and how to shift support to strengthen families, increase alternative family care options, and empower communities. This resource shares inspiring stories, engaging graphics, and explores tangible examples of work being done around the world to see children cared for in safe and loving families.
The purpose of this guidance is to advise policy makers and planners on how to apply a set of variables to their specific context to enable them to calculate the costs of human resources required to meet a target minimum ratio of social service workers per population, in the country in question. The guidance first discusses the essential steps that need to be taken to prepare for a costing exercise, and then the specific steps to take in a costing exercise for the workforce, which are outlined in the costing tool itself (to be released at a later date).
This guide is intended to inform policy makers and workforce managers in ministries of social welfare, finance and planning, and, where applicable, provincial or district authorities and other relevant national bodies responsible for the recruitment, deployment, funding or regulation of the social service workforce. The guide can also be used by a national level leadership group tasked with defining an adequate level of resourcing for social services, and, on this basis, a minimum ratio of workforce to population, alongside other steps to strengthen the social service workforce.
Although care reform is well established in some parts of the Eastern and Southern Africa, many countries in the region are just beginning their care reform journey. This short paper is aimed at these contexts. It explains what care reform is, the different components of care reform, why care reform is important and how to start a care reform process.
Key lessons learnt on how to carry out effective care reform in Eastern and Southern Africa from the COVID 19 pandemic.
The Scottish Parliament’s Social Justice and Social Security Committee has published its latest report on kinship carers, calling for improved support for carers.
This thematic report is a merged and synthesised version of two full study reports, each focusing on education and healthcare in Malaysia. More details regarding the background, methodology, findings and recommendations of this project are found in the respective study reports.
This report aims to understand digital childhoods, and what can be achieved through the Online Safety Bill to protect children online. The Children’s Commissioner’s Office (CCo) commissioned a survey of 2,005 children aged 8-17 and their parents. This survey is nationally representative of children in England, by age, gender and region. All statistics mentioned in this report are from this survey.
This qualitative study designed to identify potential prognostic factors relating to the outcome of children placed in a welfare center or foster care before the age of 4 years was based on the analysis of 34 case histories of children placed in a welfare center or foster care in Angers.
This study aims to provide an overview of the world's children who lack parental care in the light of the theoretical background and the latest research.
This paper aims to analyse how State policies, on the book and in practice, shape family reunification. It focuses on child migration under constraint in France, by analysing the timing and factors of (non-)reunification among foreign immigrants, whose legal conditions for family reunification are much more restrictive than for those who obtained the French citizenship.
This video and attached parenting tips offer simple and practical recommendations for Ukrainian parents on how to help themselves and their children to overcome various crisis situations.
This paper aims to analyse how State policies, on the book and in practice, shape family reunification. It focuses on child migration under constraint in France, by analysing the timing and factors of (non-)reunification among foreign immigrants, whose legal conditions for family reunification are much more restrictive than for those who obtained the French citizenship.
This book examines the involvement of those with care experience in the criminal justice system in an Australian jurisdiction. The majority of children in care do not come into contact with the youth justice system. However, among children involved in the youth justice system, those with care experience are overrepresented. The authors focus on the process of colonialisation and criminalisation, rather than crime.
This study, based in Romania, examined longitudinal data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care following exposure to severe psychosocial deprivation.
This joint statement was issued while the question of illegal intercountry adoptions is being raised in several countries, with an increasing number of adoptees discovering inconsistencies or errors in their adoption process, and that stories they had been told about their origins and the reasons for their adoptions were fake.
This article analyses the accounts of children’s spokespersons in Norway, whose mandate is to speak with and forward children’s views in care proceedings. The analyses show how constructions of loyalty, family interdependence, and individualism may inform spokespersons’ interpretations of children’s views, and thereby their exploratory practices in their conversations with the children.
The aim of this systematic review is both to summarize findings regarding the prevalence of mental health disorders among unaccompanied refugee minors (URM) in European countries since the last available systematic review (October 2017), and to describe associated risk factors.
In this chapter of the book 'Human Rights and Social Justice', the authors focus their attention on issues and challenges facing rural youth who have exited care, with special consideration of First Nation or Indigenous youth in Canada, and offer a multidimensional framework that can support anti-colonial and anti-oppressive models of practice.
This book 'Youth Without Family to Lean On' draws together interdisciplinary, global perspectives to provide a comprehensive review of the characteristics, dynamics, and development of youth (aged 15–25) who have no family to lean on, either practically or psychologically.
Despite rising numbers of unaccompanied child migrants in the Americas, very limited research directly engages with youth as they journey north to seek protection in the United States. In this article, the authors examine young Central American migrant experiences of bordering, focusing on policing and shelter management.
In this scoping review the authors analyze the findings of studies conducted over the past two decades that have specifically examined face-to-face contact with birth parents for children in non-kinship foster care, with the goal of determining more clearly when it may contribute positively to the child's well-being. The review involved a search of nine electronic databases in Spain, the U.S., Portugal, and the UK.
In this theoretical paper, the authors argue that, due to the detrimental impact of parental loss on academic achievement in France, orphaned students should be considered as students with special educational needs. This is important to provide appropriate educational responses consistent with inclusive education.
This paper contributes to the scholarship on refugee law and resettlement by exploring the ways in which the crisis in the Uyghur homeland in Turkey has impacted and continues to impact Uyghurs’ refugee narratives and priorities as they reorganize their lives in the diaspora.
This U.S.-based study details the prevalence of youth at the intersection of parental incarceration and foster care, their demographic characteristics, and heterogeneity in their mental health.
The aim of this study was to investigate (a) the extent to which child maltreatment co-occurs with parental separation and (b) associations between different types of child maltreatment and various types of separation-associated interparental conflict. This cross-national comparative study on family dynamics was based on National survey data of the US, Russia and 17 European countries indicates that in these countries 10–44% of the couples with children had separated before one of their children reached the age of 15 years.
Family foster care is the option of choice in case of out-of-home placements in Flanders, Belgium, resulting in rising numbers of family foster care placements. As a number of the foster children experienced traumatic events and all of them were separated from their primary caregivers, concerns can be raised about the quality of attachment between foster children and their foster carers. In this study, the attachment behavior was scored by the foster mothers on the Attachment Insecurity Screening Index.
The aim of this study was to investigate the circumstances that contribute to the future anxiety affecting looked after children in Poland as they move to independence.
The study aims to comprehend the ways in which being raised by grandparents, influence the vulnerable children’s schooling. The aim is to contribute insights to our understanding on how these children’s education towards academic success could be enhanced.
This chapter examines practical insight from research conducted across the UK and elsewhere in Europe of the contexts that children were experiencing, the pre-existing causes of some of the challenges and examples of children providing evidence about their experiences and insights into how policy and services could better respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article addresses the predicament of family service systems being built on parents’ voluntary participation and the need for parental consent, which may block children’s right to services. It examines parental consent and the impact of parental non-consent for children’s opportunities to receive protection and support in Swedish child and family welfare.
This paper examines the understanding of poverty emerging in voluntourists’ accounts of their first-hand experiences of poverty alleviation. Based on the ethnography of an orphanage in Nepal, the authors show that despite voluntourists’ good intentions and even (self-)criticism of the volunteer tourism approach to poverty relief, their accounts tend to consolidate rather regressive ideas about poverty.
This global study reviewed the literature on family-based mental health interventions for refugees across migration contexts and settings to identify types of interventions and intervention components, implementation approaches and to assess effectiveness. The review used a systematic approach, and ten intervention studies were retained for analysis.
This report reviewed evidence for the effects of psychosocial neglect on development derived from studies of young children raised in U.S. institutions. In these caregiving environments, children are physically safe and receive instrumental care, but the social, emotional, and cognitive components of caregiving are impoverished. The damaging and often lasting effects of these caregiving environments on young children's development underscore that psychosocial neglect should be considered as dangerous to child well-being as physical maltreatment.
This U.K.-based study explored the life experiences of care experienced adults in higher education to understand the factors that impeded or enhanced their journeys.
This U.S.-based study seeks to determine if COVID-19 has resulted in unique impacts on foster care alumni, and if these impacts are the same for LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ transition age youth.
While several interventions have been put in place to address the needs of persons with disabilities in developed countries, their counterparts in low-income countries, such as Ghana, continue to face marginalisation and exclusion. Using user-perspective and co-production approaches, this report analyses existing services for Ghanaians with disabilities and the relevance and usefulness of these services.
OBJETIVOS DEL ESTUDIO: Identificar y documentar mejores prácticas en la prestación de servicios residenciales de cuidado, orientados a la transformación de servicios de cuidado de la niñez y adolescencia en Guatemala.
Estudio orientado a la transformación de servicios de cuidado residencial a familiar y comunitario de la niñez y adolescencia en Guatemala.
Cambiando la Forma en que Cuidamos (o sus siglas en inglés, CTWWC) Guatemala realizó un estudio con el objetivo de identificar y documentar buenas prácticas en la prestación de servicios de cuidado residencial, con el objetivo de transformar los servicios de cuidado a la niñez en Guatemala.
This paper reviews the range of factors state legislation includes in the U.S., reviews scant existing literature on how termination of parental rights (TPRs) may effect youth, and proposes several options for ways that unproductive TPRs can be reduced, and timely reinstatements increased.
Most residential children's social care services in England, including children's homes, are operated by for-profit companies, but the implications of this development are not well understood. This paper aims to address this gap by undertaking the first longitudinal and comprehensive evaluation of the associations between for-profit outsourcing and quality of service provision among English local authorities and children's homes.
COVID-19 led to widespread disruption of services that promote family well-being. Families impacted most were those already experiencing disparities due to structural and systemic barriers. Existing support systems faded into the background as families became more isolated. New approaches were needed to deliver evidence-based, low-cost interventions to reach families within communities. The authors adapted a family strengthening intervention developed in Kenya (“Tuko Pamoja”) for the United States.
This study sought to explore the psychological well-being, academic adjustment, and quality of parental attachment of LBC during COVID-19 in rural China based on Left-Behind Children’s (LBC) word of mouth.
The purpose of this study was to establish the prevalence of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in child residential care and to explore predictors of accumulation and clustering patterns.
This infographic describes how child welfare organizations can center child welfare worker well-being to better support children and families.
This article focuses on some of the care leavers networks in South Asia.
У цьому відео ми пропонуємо прості і практичні рекомендації про те, як у цей непростий час допомагати собі та своїм дітям долати різні кризові ситуації.
The Adolescent Data Portal features global, regional and country-level data on key indicators together with information on the socio-economic contexts in which adolescents live are found here. The portal includes globally comparable indicators, closely linked to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
In this webinar three members from the Family for Every Child alliance present how they support the mental health of vulnerable children they work with in their different contexts, sharing their programmes and methodologies and responding to questions from audience members.
