The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of residential care from the perspectives of a group of young people who had lived in residential childcare institutions in Bangladesh with a view to making improvements in residential childcare in the future.

In the context of COVID-19, this manual focuses on psychosocial care of children and prevention of violence in spaces where children stay (child care institutions, families, temporary isolation facilities, NGO shelters, etc.)

This issue brief addresses the following questions: What are family resource centers? What are the defining characteristics of a family resource center? What do we know about the effectiveness of family resource centers in reducing child welfare involvement? What is the return on investment? What is missing from the research literature?

Abstract

Background

This TACTYC funded research highlights the role that Maintained Nursery Schools (MNS) play in supporting families within areas of extreme social deprivation in the UK.

This rapid assessment was conducted with 12,100 respondents across 13 countries, aimed at understanding the needs and gaps in assuring assistance for affected children and communities during the COVID-19 crisis.

Ce rapport souligne que, bien que les enfants ne représentent pas un groupe à haut risque en terme de mortalité directe due à la COVID-19, la pandémie a des impacts secondaires de grande envergure qui augmentent les risques pour les droits et le bien-être des enfants africains.

This policy paper by Save the Children outlines some of the main threats the COVID-19 pandemic poses to children in Africa and suggests some of the political and programmatic responses to protect children’s rights.

This open letter calls on national governments and multilateral institutions to work immediately to strengthen ‘child protection in COVID-19’ response frameworks and to provide sufficient donor support to implement these responses effectively.

In this comment from the Lancet, the authors explores how to communication to children about the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly when someone in the family is hospitalised for or dies from COVID-19.

This child-led research initiative was conducted under the umbrella of World Vision’s DEAR project (Development Education and Awareness Raising) and the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. The study explores explore SDG 16.2, the goal that focuses on the issue of ‘abuse, exploitation, trafficking, and all forms of violence against and torture of children’.

Child Trends conducted this 10th national survey of U.S. child welfare agency expenditures to promote an understanding of the challenges and opportunities agencies face in serving vulnerable children. This report is part of an array of resources compiled from the survey’s findings.

This paper explores how college graduates with foster care histories fare after graduating from a 4-year college that offered a campus-based program.

The goal of this research project is to inform policy and practice in Uganda by providing an estimate of the number of children on the streets in Kampala, Jinja, Iganga and Mbale; insight into the characteristics of these children; and exploration of children’s perspectives of their engagement on the streets.

This briefing note from Spoon Foundation provides considerations for program implementers, policy makers, and funders of programs in nutrition, child protection, and early child development.

This document from the Spoon Foundation provides guidelines for residential institution administrators to keep children nourished and their immune systems strong during the pandemic through diverse, nutrient-dense foods.

This call to action, endorsed by several organizations, calls on European governments and European Union institutions to reinforce actions to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable children and families during the COVID-19 crisis. It outlines the main challenges for vulnerable children and families, and what the EU and European governments can do to address these challenges.

This briefing sets out how organisations can use the Keeping Children Safe International Child Safeguarding Standards to ensure they do all they can to protect children from harm caused by their staff, programmes, operations and partners in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Children's Trust Fund Alliance has compiled what they are hearing from parents in the U.S. and some of the creative and flexible responses that their members have been implementing into this document.

This two-module course is aligned to the Guidelines to Strengthen the Social Service Workforce for Child Protection and aims to equip the learner with key strategies to strengthen social service workforce.

This think piece from Innocenti, UNICEF's Office of Research, unpacks what COVID-19 means for data collection efforts on violence against children (VAC). 

This report from Change the Record aims to provide an Australian national overview of the Critical Condition of First Nations communities during Covid-19. The report includes evidence on the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on children in detention centers as well as children in out-of-home care and their families.

This qualitative study used a case study design to explore the manifestations of the core psycho-social deficits associated with children domiciled in child headed households.

This webpage from the Children's Trust Fund Alliance features research and theory of change, training, and resources on prevention child neglect.

In this webinar hosted by the Center for the Study of Social Policy, experts discussed how family support professionals and organizations have adapted to serve families during the COVID-19 outbreak, and what we are learning that we will carry forward from this time.

If the United States adopted a child allowance, says this brief from the Center for the Study of Social Policy, it would ensure that families with children always have a minimum income on which they can rely, whatever the circumstances.

This brief from the Center for the Study of Social Policy in the U.S. calls for "a much more robust and permanent solution to ensure that everyone has access to paid leave who needs it, during this immediate crisis, and into the future."

The Committee on the Rights of the Child has issued this statement to warn of the grave physical, emotional and psychological effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on children and calls on States to protect the rights of children. 

Kusudi la dokezo hili la kitalaamu ni kusaidia watendaji wa ulinzi wa watoto na maafisa wa serikali katika mwitikio wao wa kukabiliana mara moja na changamoto za ulinzi wa watoto zinazowakabili watoto ambao wako katika hatari ya kutenganishwa na familia zao au kuwekwa  mahali kwaajili ya uangalizi mbadala katika kipindi hiki cha  janga la COVID-19. 

Este documento complementar à Nota Técnica da Força-Tarefa Interagências sobre a Proteção de crianças e adolescentes durante a pandemia de COVID-19: Crianças, adolescentes e cuidados alternativos apresenta dicas úteis para promover o engajamento e a participação de todas as partes interessadas, algo crucial para a manutenção da continuidade dos serviços para crianças e adolescentes.

This tool is meant to help practitioners stay grounded in family strengths as a way to overcome challenges and help families thrive even when the current COVID-19 crisis is weighing heavily on practitioners' and families' minds.

This article illuminates the important role the Committee on the Rights of the Child played in monitoring child abuse and neglect in the implementation of the now thirty years old Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC).

In this study, a transdisciplinary group of key stakeholders in Australia jointly constructed a causal loop diagram to bring forth the systemic structure underlying the issue of repeat child removals (where parents lose successive infants and children to out-of-home care) and identify system conditions that need to be altered.

This exploratory secondary data analysis compares demographics, mental health/well-being, and protective mothering strategies of mothers who have experienced intimate partner violence (IPV) whose children were taken into care compared to those whose children were not to identify key characteristics associated with children being removed by child protective service (CPS) in Western Canada.

The aim of this study was to investigate the prevalence of depression, anxiety, and resilience in Eritrean unaccompanied refugee minors living with foster parents in Sudan.

Based on the resilience theory, which highlights the role of one’s social resources in fostering resilience, the current study explored the role of care leavers' formal and informal social networks during the transition to adulthood, from the point of view of 50 young adults and their social workers.

This study examined whether childhood out-of-home care was associated with all-cause mortality until the end of 2013 in the UK.

This policy brief reports new causal evidence of how foster care influences children’s safety and educational outcomes in the U.S. state of Michigan.

With a recent interest by stakeholders in Ghana to consider kinship care as an alternative care option in child welfare policy, this study explores current kinship care challenges to help identify and address potential setbacks for policy and practice recommendations.

The current study uses two randomized control trials, one conducted with foster caregivers and one conducted with birth parents, to investigate the longitudinal effects of caregiver type (foster versus birth parent) and a home-visiting parenting intervention on emotion regulation among young children referred to Child Protective Services (CPS).

The purpose of this study was to determine the financial challenges faced by caregivers of orphans in Kitui Central Subcounty, Kitui County, Kenya.

In this study, the authors interviewed social care practitioners including directors, senior and middle managers, frontline social workers, social worker‐academics and family support workers who work with vulnerable children to identify the issues and concerns held by social care workers about placing vulnerable children in boarding schools.

The current study aimed to describe the relative contributions of measures of professional quality of life (ProQOL) to intent on leaving the workforce among child welfare professionals.

This study systematically summarizes the effect of parenting interventions on kinship foster caregivers and their cared for children, and examines the intervention strategies and research methods used in order to provide a context in which to better understand effects of interventions.

This video from UNICEF Cambodia, in the Khmer language, explores children protection case management during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This webinar focuses on standard 16 from the 2019 edition of the CPMS - strengthening family and caregiving environments - in the context of the current global COVID-19 pandemic.

The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action and UNICEF facilitated this webinar to discuss the guidance in the Technical Note on COVID-19 and Children Deprived of their Liberty and some of the successes and challenges in protecting the rights of children in detention during the pandemic.

This report from Australia's Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission aimed to trace the past laws, practices and policies which resulted in the separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families by compulsion, duress or undue influence, and the effects of those laws, practices and policies.

This article from UNICEF Cambodia describes how UNICEF and its partners are responding to the needs of children in residential care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study aims at comparing subjective well-being (SWB) of children in residential care and in foster families in two European territories or jurisdictions: Portugal and Catalonia (Spain).