There is still limited research on South African youths aging out of residential care, and there is no established protocol to guide social workers in preparing them for independent living. This study aimed to investigate what elements should be included in a protocol for social workers to effectively prepare youths leaving child and youth care centres (CYCCs).

This scoping review examined the scientific literature on youth aging out of substitute care in Canada to address challenges in estimating the country’s contribution to this growing global research field. The review identified key trends, research gaps, and future directions, emphasizing the need to better integrate existing findings to build a more cohesive Canadian evidence base.

This webinar, co-hosted by the Columbia University Seminar on Global Mental Health, examined how the shift toward localization is reshaping community-based child protection. The session explored both the challenges and opportunities of localizing child protection and well-being initiatives, emphasizing the need to transfer power to communities and support genuine local ownership for sustainable impact.

This article presents a brief history of intercountry adoptions from China and other countries, discusses reasons for its demise, and considers the consequences—for China’s children and for intercountry adoptions more broadly. It questions whether we are indeed seeing the end of intercountry adoption “as we know it,” while recognizing the emergence of new systems of care.

This article highlights the role of adoptee activism in raising awareness and changing policy regarding Intercountry Adoption (ICA) in The Netherlands. Through interviews with a selection of adoptees engaged in activism, this study shows that adoptees became engaged in activism as a result of growing adoptee consciousness in combination with encountering irreconciliation; they employed many types of activism, sometimes with different goals and strategies; they cooperated in different constellations and with many allies such as journalists, lawyers and scholars; and their activism had significant impact on general awareness and government policy.

This video provides a short overview of the Global Charter on Children's Care Reform:Guidance for Requesting Technical Assistance, which provides instructions on how governments can request technical support from a team of care reform advisors to develop or begin implementing those commitments. This includes a description of the different types of technical assistance available, ways it can be provided, and a step-by-step guidance for submitting requests.

This video provides a short overview of the Global Charter on Children's Care Reform: Guidance for Developing Commitments, which supports governments to design ambitious, measurable, and context-specific commitments that align with the Charter’s principles. It includes practical criteria, examples, and participatory approaches to ensure commitments are realistic, well-resourced, and responsive to children’s needs. 

This webinar presented findings from a 2025 Media Landscape Analysis by Pinkston and Barna’s 2025 survey of U.S. Christians, highlighting a significant shift in Christian media narratives away from orphanages and toward family-based care, alongside rising awareness that poverty—not orphanhood—drives most placements.

This brief by the International Data Alliance for Children on the Move (IDAC) calls for urgent global action to close these data gaps and strengthen evidence-based policies that uphold the rights of unaccompanied and separated children. Based on a 2025 literature review of more than 200 sources, it identifies key trends by age, gender, migration status and route, and other variables.

This webinar, held December 16, 2025, spotlighted the powerful intersection between two consequential global advocacy movements in human rights: the reform of alternative care systems for children and the advancement of children’s access to justice.

ACE Zambia, founded in 1998 as a faith-based organization supporting orphans and vulnerable children, gradually shifted from operating multiple residential care facilities toward strengthening family- and community-based services after recognizing the harms of long-term institutionalization. Between 2014 and 2025, the organization closed all residential homes, expanded preventative and family-focused programs, and ultimately increased its reach by supporting far more children in safe family settings using the same level of resources.

The 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) affirms the importance of family, culture, and community in children’s lives and obligates governments to support families and protect children from discrimination, violence, and exploitation, yet many countries still lack policies that require a child-rights approach, prioritize best interests in decision-making, or prohibit corporal punishment. This article critically examines how effectively Australia, Canada, and the United States have implemented key CRC principles—particularly best interests and corporal punishment—by comparing their child protection policies, legislation, and practices to assess the Convention’s influence and its potential to drive broader system reform.

The development of foster care in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region should be seen in the context of a global movement for child care system reform, framed by the key principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 1989), the UN Convention on the Rights of Pers

What We Stand For: Essentials of Children’s Rights is an engaging, story-driven online course that brings UNICEF’s child rights mandate to life. The course helps translate their shared commitment to children’s rights into everyday practice across all areas of work.

The Chapin Hall report evaluates the My First Place program, which provides intensive case management and fully subsidized housing to young people aging out of extended foster care in six California counties. Using data on 2,598 participants, the report finds that program completers were more likely to be employed, earned higher wages, and were more likely to enroll in and complete a semester of college compared with nonparticipants or those who did not complete the program.

Adoption in Zimbabwe, while intended to provide stable families for children without parental care, often marginalizes adopted adolescents by excluding them from decisions, limiting transparency, and severing cultural ties. This study highlights the emotional distress and identity challenges this creates and calls for more inclusive, transparent, and culturally grounded adoption practices that uphold children’s rights and voices.

Building on a presentation invited for a Kilbrandon Children’s Research webinar on media representations of children and young people in the care and criminal justice system, this article discusses the legacies of Canadian ‘care’ practices premised on violent assimilation and erasure.

This study examines how children in Swiss residential care perceive safety, revealing that while institutions aim to protect them, many still experience both safety and unsafety shaped by physical spaces, institutional rules, and relationships with staff. By centering children’s voices, the article highlights gaps between residential care’s protective mandate and children’s lived experiences, calling for a more nuanced, justice-oriented understanding of safety in child welfare.

كجزء من الحملة العالميّة لإصلاح رعاية الأطفال، تُحثّ الدول على تقوية الأسر، وتوسيع نطاق الرعاية البديلة الآمنة والحانية ضمن بيئة أسريّة، والإنهاء التدريجيّ والمستمرّ لاستخدام المؤسّسات لرعاية الأطفال.

Le guide pour l’élaboration des engagements aide les gouvernements à concevoir des engagements ambitieux, mesurables et adaptés à chaque contexte, conformes aux principes de la Charte. Il comprend des critères pratiques, des exemples et des approches participatives afin de garantir que les engagements soient réalistes, dotés de ressources suffisantes et répondent aux besoins des enfants.

La Guía para el desarrollo de compromisos apoya a los gobiernos en el diseño de compromisos ambiciosos, medibles y específicos para cada contexto que correspondan a los principios de la Carta. Incluye criterio práctico, ejemplos y enfoques participativos para garantizar que los compromisos sean realistas, cuenten con los recursos necesarios y respondan a las necesidades de las niñas, niños y adolescentes.

Las niñas o niños que no pueden ser cuidados por sus madres o padres a menudo viven con familiares o amigos de la familia. Este tipo de cuidado se le conoce cómo cuidado familiar.

As crianças que não podem ser cuidadas por seus pais geralmente vivem com parentes ou amigos da família. Esse cuidado é conhecido como cuidado por família extensa ou próximos.

This paper analyzes child rights in conflict, with a particular focus on the ongoing war in Ukraine, where children face heightened vulnerabilities to trafficking and exploitation. It identifies the key impacts of contemporary conflicts on children and the role of social workers in these contexts.

This study explores the experiences of young Syrian migrant women transitioning out of institutional care in Türkiye, revealing how gender, migration status, and structural barriers shape their pathways to adulthood. It finds that gaps in education, employment support, housing, social capital, and aftercare services create persistent instability and exclusion, underscoring the need for more inclusive, gender-sensitive aftercare policies.

Investing in parent and caregiver support is one of the most impactful and cost-effective actions countries can take to advance children’s rights and accelerate progress toward the SDGs.

Climate change is increasingly recognized as a child rights crisis, with children without parental care being particularly vulnerable to its impacts. This brief highlights how climate change heightens risks of losing parental care, creates unaccompanied children, and disrupts alternative care systems, and it offers recommendations for policymakers and practitioners to prevent separation and protect these children.

Governments across Europe and Central Asia have advanced child care reforms, yet many children—especially those with disabilities or from marginalized communities—still face risks of separation without strong statutory family support systems in place. This White Paper outlines the essential policies, services, workforce standards, and rights-based approaches countries need to prevent unnecessary separation, strengthen families, and ensure every child can grow up safely in a supportive family environment.

The Moldova Transformation Guidance aims to support the transformation process of residential care facilities (RCF) to models that promote family support and community-based services, or to safely close them and redirect their resources. National and local authorities can use this guidance to design, plan, budget, communicate, and coordinate transformation at both individual and system levels.

The publication summarizes lessons and good practices from the Community Engagement for Better Care pilot project implemented in four communities by Diaconia of the Bessarabian Orthodox Church in Moldova in 2024-2025. The project explored how faith communities - especially the Orthodox Church - can support children and families in need.

This booklet of sermons, developed by Diaconia of the Bessarabian Orthodox Church in Moldova promotes solidarity-based communities where children and families thrive in safe and nurturing environments. It provides sermons for priests to emphasize child protection, family values, and community engagement.

These SOPs aim to strengthen the effectiveness and well-being of Kenya’s child protection practitioners by promoting accountability, continuous learning, and reflective practice. By prioritizing practitioners’ psychosocial health and standardizing supportive supervision across the State Department for Children Services, the guidance seeks to improve service quality, reduce burnout, and enhance outcomes for vulnerable children.

This article reports that in 2024, over  2,000 children identified as trafficked or unaccompanied asylum seekers went missing while under the care of local authorities in the UK — 37% of 2,335 trafficked children, and 13% of 11,999 lone‑child asylum seekers in care.

This report, from Ireland, provides a comprehensive exploration of the principles and practice of independent advocacy for children and young people with care experience, with a view to signposting what constitutes best practice in this field and proposing a model of advocacy practice which reflects the key themes arising. Resulting from a research project carried out with EPIC (Empowering People in Care), the report draws from the views of those who have experienced advocacy as children and young adults, those who have provided advocacy as professional independent advocates, management personnel responsible for the provision of those services in the context of EPIC and significant stakeholders in the field of advocacy service provision. 

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the institutional, legal, and social frameworks surrounding child protection in India. Anchored in a multidisciplinary approach, the book brings together insights from law, social work, psychology, education, and public policy to examine how various systems interact in addressing the issues related to protection of children from abuse, neglect, trafficking, and exploitation.

This study explores the lived experiences of orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa’s rural Vhembe District and finds that they face significant challenges, including maltreatment, deprivation, neglect, abuse, and social alienation. The findings highlight an urgent need for strengthened psychosocial support through coordinated stakeholder action, reinforced drop-in centres, and enhanced prioritization by social workers.

This paper outlines the development of a community-led child protection approach (Seeds), created through a multi-stage process involving a systematic literature review, formative research in Uganda and Lebanon, a field test in Sri Lanka, a feasibility study in Colombia, and expert review, resulting in a six-phase model designed to strengthen children’s protection and their sense of safety.

Street children in Bangladesh face chronic food insecurity, unstable shelter, limited access to health and education, and pervasive violence and abuse, as revealed through qualitative interviews with twenty children in Khulna district. Based on the hierarchy of needs expressed by the children, the study identifies essential long-term protection interventions, including community shelter services, psychological counseling, and skill-development training, and underscores the urgent need to implement these measures to ensure their safety and well-being.

This study, based on vignette-based focus group discussions with social workers in Norway and Sweden, examines how they balance children’s cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic continuity with other needs when matching migrant-background children with foster families, revealing a complex process shaped by the child’s and parents’ wishes, foster carers’ capacities, and organizational constraints. While social workers value cultural continuity, they often prioritize more urgent care needs—especially amid a significant shortage of foster families—creating a risk that children’s rights and needs related to their cultural background may not be fully met.

CELCIS’ October 2025 webinar explored recent developments in residential child care across Scotland, featuring insights on nurture-based practice, shifts in inspection approaches aligned with The Promise, and staff development through reflective practice. Speakers highlighted how new care models, regulatory changes, and whole-system approaches are strengthening practice and improving outcomes for children and young people.

This Framework outlines how countries can build strong, coherent, multisectoral systems that ensure all parents and caregivers have access to the support needed to raise children in safe and nurturing environments, providing a shared foundation for aligning policies, financing, workforce development and service delivery across health, education, social protection, child protection and community-based services.

The Family Network Pilot (FNP) aims to help UK children stay safely within their extended families and prevent entry into care by providing Family Group Conferences and Family Network Support Packages. This report evaluates the pilot’s implementation, processes, and impacts across seven local authorities, using qualitative research and monitoring data analysis.

This report explores how childhood institutional care negatively shapes health, well‑being, housing, and social outcomes well into older adulthood for people now aged 50 and above in Australia. It argues for a shift away from institutional aged care and towards trauma‑informed, person‑centered home or community care — designed with and for care leavers — to uphold dignity and improve long-term quality of life.

This study explores how children living in children’s homes in Luxembourg experience their daily lives, revealing that while many feel sad or worried, they also demonstrate resilience and the ability to find joy. The findings highlight that children feel better when adults listen and take them seriously, and that additional support with school and caring relationships can improve their well-being.

This study identifies high rates of gross and fine motor delays among young children living in residential care facilities in Thailand and examines factors contributing to these developmental challenges. These findings highlight the developmental vulnerabilities of young children in residential care and point to key predictors that can inform early interventions.

This article examines how key concepts and terminologies within and surrounding the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child shape narratives in the African human rights landscape, emphasizing the need to interrogate and deconstruct them through a decolonial lens. Using document analysis, it argues that critically problematising these terms is essential for strengthening the African Children’s Committee’s application of decoloniality and for advancing equity and accountability in child rights implementation.

This study explores the lived experiences of South African grandparents fostering their orphaned teenage grandchildren, revealing significant financial, emotional, psychological, and physical challenges. Despite these difficulties, grandparents demonstrate strong resilience supported by religious, family, and community networks, underscoring the need for standardized screening protocols for prospective foster caregivers.

This study examines Norwegian birth parents’ perspectives on the support they need for successful family reunification, revealing significant gaps in guidance, financial assistance, and help mobilizing social networks. The findings underscore that low trust in child welfare services can hinder parents’ willingness to accept support, highlighting the need for stronger institutional collaboration and tailored assistance before, during, and after reunification.

This article analyzes the gap between Pakistan’s progressive child protection laws and the harsh realities faced by the country’s 1.5 million destitute and neglected children, highlighting how weak implementation, custodial care models, and social stigma undermine their rights and well-being. It argues that meaningful rehabilitation requires shifting from welfare-based responses to empowerment-focused, holistic support systems that integrate legal protection, trauma-informed care, and market-relevant education.