This case study on how to regulate voluntourism that involves children is based on the analysis of actionable models resulting from the experiences of the selected origin and destination countries that undertook efforts to address this issue over the last years.

Este documento es un estudio de caso basado en la historia de transformación del Hogar Esquipulas, liderada por la Asociación de Religiosas Franciscanas de San Antonio en Esquipulas, Chiquimula, Guatemala, representa un testimonio inspirador del compromiso profundo con el bienestar de los niños, niñas y adolescentes.

Desde Tijuana, este relato muestra cómo una comunidad religiosa, las Hermanas de Nuestra Señora de la Caridad del Buen Pastor, decidió pasar de un modelo institucional de cuidado a un enfoque centrado en las familias y la vida comunitaria, priorizando el derecho de cada niña, niño y adolescente a crecer en un entorno seguro, amoroso y protector.

The Government of Kenya’s National Framework for the Implementation of Kafaalah Care provides structured guidance for practitioners, aiming to promote childcare to family-based settings. It outlines roles, coordination mechanisms, and monitoring strategies to ensure safe, standardized care for vulnerable children, and is intended for use by both state and non-state child protection practitioners.

This Policy and Practice Short has emerged from an Erasmus+ Key Action 2 project funded by the European Union (EU). The project has become known as the PANDA project, an acronym drawn from the words participation and collaboration for action, and its focus is on promoting the participation rights of young children, aged 12 and under in child welfare and child protection.

This study explores the experiences of Palestinian parents in East Jerusalem whose young children were removed from their homes due to verified maltreatment, highlighting the disruption to their parental roles and the added challenges of legal, political, and geographic barriers. Findings show how parents cope with separation, from acceptance to viewing it as temporary, and call for policies and interventions that address the intersecting socio-political and legal complexities shaping their lives.

This study reviews Pakistan’s legal and policy responses to child abuse, noting that while comprehensive laws exist, enforcement remains fragmented and inconsistent across provinces. It calls for systemic reforms—including centralized coordination, victim-centered services, mandatory reporting, and stronger prevention measures—to move from reactive responses toward a sustainable, multi-sectoral child protection framework.

This paper outlines a research agenda to guide the initial stages of work of the new Notre Dame Strengthening Families (NDSF) Research Initiative in the U.S. This initiative is focused on building knowledge around the economics of families and evidence-based ways to promote and strengthen healthy families.

This report examines the challenges faced by local authorities in providing cost-effective, high-quality residential care for looked-after children in England, where numbers have risen to 83,630 as of March 2024.

The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MoEYS) and the UNICEF Refugee Response Office in the Czech Republic commissioned this report to assess the situation of refugee children in alternative care. While examining the broader system and identifying how this system can be improved, the analysis pays particular attention to the needs of refugee children from Ukraine following the significant increase in refugee arrivals since 2022.

This study examines the Parent Partner program, which employs parents with lived experience of child removal to support families in the reunification process. Findings suggest that children whose parents worked with Parent Partners were more likely to be safely reunified, indicating the model’s potential as an effective child welfare intervention.

Family engagement is a critical component of child welfare practice. The present study analyzes publicly available data to document U.S. state efforts to engage families.

This article records briefly the history of the Family Inclusion Network as an organisation that promotes family inclusive child protection practice.

This position paper examines how stigma shapes reproductive health, poverty alleviation, and child welfare, influencing policy, service provision, and lived experiences. It argues that stigma is a structural barrier that worsens inequalities and calls for a cross-sectoral, lived experience–informed approach to reduce exclusion and improve outcomes.

In this report, the Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities, Heba Hagrass, highlights barriers faced by children with disabilities and their caregivers to the enjoyment of their human rights, in the absence of adequate support services.

This article examines the challenges of foster care in Nigeria, highlighting risks of abuse—especially in informal placements—and questioning whether foster care is always necessary or suitable. It concludes that foster care should be a last resort, urging preventive measures and, where unavoidable, the use of safe and appropriate foster homes that prioritize the best interests of the child.

This study explores the policy environment for children cared for by grandparents in Libode, Eastern Cape, South Africa, finding no specific policies to guide or support such caregiving. It recommends developing dedicated policies, resources, and information to better equip grandparents, while contributing new insights to scholarship and informing policymakers.

This article examines challenges in Sri Lanka’s child protection system for children with disabilities, drawing on insights from 11 professionals to identify critical gaps in policy, services, and societal attitudes. It proposes eight practical, cost-conscious strategies to strengthen disability-inclusive protection aligned with the UN CRPD, offering lessons for global child protection reform.

In The Empowerment Shift, Emmanuel "Nabs" Nabieu—who once grew up in an orphanage himself—offers a clear, practical roadmap for transforming how we care for vulnerable children.

The Kafaalah Community Engagement Facilitator's Flipbook is a practical guide designed to support trained facilitators—such as Children Officers, Imams, Ustadh, Ustadhas, and other Muslim community leaders—in delivering community sessions on the Kafaalah. It offers structured guidance for engaging male caregivers, female caregivers, and children through interactive sessions.

The Kafaalah Facilitator’s Guide is part of a training package to strengthen understanding and implementation of Kafaalah, a family-based alternative care option for children in Kenya. Developed by the Government of Kenya with support from Changing the Way We Care, it provides structured session plans, tools, and activities to help child protection professionals and community members effectively promote and practice Kafaalah.

This package of materials on Kafaalah - was developed by the Government of Kenya in collaboration with Changing the Way We Care, UNICEF, and other key development partners and civil society actors.

This article examines how care leavers navigate their relationships with biological mothers and fathers. It is based on a qualitative study from Austria, which focused on social networks and family relationships of 18-to 27-year-old care-experienced youth.

This study examined the short-term impacts of COVID-19-related orphanhood on children and adolescents in peri-urban Khayelitsha, South Africa, finding that those who lost a parent or primary caregiver experienced significantly greater mental health burdens, food insecurity, caregiving responsibilities, and engagement in social risk behaviours compared to peers without such loss.

This study explores the experiences of exploited orphans in institutional care in India and the factors that contribute to their cognitive resilience, using qualitative interviews with 20 children aged 12–16. Findings show that resilience is shaped by problem-solving skills, goal setting, self-regulation, peer support, education, and stable caregiving, highlighting the need for policies and interventions that strengthen both individual and environmental supports.

This paper reviews the challenges faced by unaccompanied and separated migrant children (USMC) in South Africa and the implications for social work practice. It highlights how social workers often lack adequate training and resources to meet the complex, multicultural needs of USMC, emphasizing cross-cultural social work as the most appropriate model for support.

This scoping review analyzes 31 studies on young women leaving residential care worldwide, highlighting their unique gender-specific challenges such as early pregnancy and gender-based violence. Despite recurring patterns across contexts, research on this group remains limited, especially as they are often treated as a subset of broader studies, pointing to the need for more focused investigation.

This article uses Nancy Fraser’s social justice framework to examine the experiences of youth leaving care in Ghana, South Africa, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, drawing on interviews with 45 care-leavers conducted by peer researchers. Findings reveal how intersecting injustices—such as stigma, exclusion, and lack of resources—undermine their transition to adulthood, underscoring the need for stronger aftercare services, recognition of diverse identities, and greater youth participation in shaping policy and support.

This review explores South Africa’s foster care grant system, highlighting how rising numbers of children in foster care have strained social workers and overwhelmed the system. It examines challenges such as lapsing foster care orders, dependency concerns, and unsustainable practices, while offering recommendations to strengthen the system and better support children and families.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of trends and progress in reducing the number of residential care facilities in Cambodia and the children placed in them between 2015–2024.

This scoping review examines how social workers decide to place children in residential care and how facilities are selected, drawing on 10 global studies analyzed through the Decision-Making Ecology framework. Findings reveal that decisions are often shaped by a child’s age, clinical needs, and professional discretion, but frequently lack structured assessments, consistent child involvement, and reliable information—pointing to the need for stronger collaboration and research to support more child-centred practices.

A round table in Brussels, co-hosted by Hope and Homes for Children and European Parliament Vice President Victor Negrescu, explored child protection and care reform in Moldova within the context of EU accession. The report highlights progress made, ongoing challenges, and shared commitments to ensuring every child in Moldova grows up in a safe and caring family.

Many children in kinship care face trauma, poverty, and strained family relationships, yet their carers often lack adequate support. This feasibility study of Family Solutions’ mediation and positive parenting intervention in South Hampshire, U.K. highlights promising approaches to strengthen communication, reduce conflict, and improve outcomes for kinship families.

This study investigated how Finnish, Taiwanese, and U.S. children conceptualized and experienced care.

This working paper by Joan Lombardi, senior advisor to the Collaborative on Global Children's Issues, and Lauren Simmons provides a brief overview of the risks and potential of early childhood and the changing climate and showcases a dozen innovative approaches where early childhood and climate sectors have successfully converged.

BBC Eye Investigations follows the journey of Reem al-Kari to find her son Karim Turjman - one of 3,700 children who went missing during Syria’s civil war from 2011 to 2024.

A new investigation by Lighthouse Reports, with a coalition of six Syrian and international media, reveals how a major EU and UK-funded childcare charity, SOS Children’s Villages, held children in orphanages to extort their parents. 

This special issue of the Children and Youth Services Review concerns the governance of children's care systems in low and middle-income countries, with a focus on Cambodia, Uganda and Zambia. The special issue focuses on the political and bureaucratic factors that shape priority for and the effectiveness of national children's care systems in low and middle-income countries.

India’s 23.6 million orphaned and abandoned children often rely on overburdened caregivers in child care institutions, where staff shortages and high demand affect quality of care. This study evaluates a capability-building program by Udayan Care and Duke University, showing how strengthening caregivers’ skills, knowledge, and wellbeing can improve outcomes for vulnerable children.

Given the severe impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and chronic poverty, the care of orphans and other vulnerable children (OVC) is a significant national issue in Zambia. This article examines the evolution of governance and policy for the care of OVC and identifies the factors that have shaped Zambia’s priority for and capacity to address this issue.

This article reviews the political factors shaping orphan and vulnerable children (OVC) care systems in low-income countries, highlighting weak governance, limited political commitment, and heavy dependence on external actors. It introduces a social science–based framework of eight key factors—spanning policymaking, governance, and context—to guide research and strengthen OVC care systems.

Alarmingly high numbers of Ugandan children experience or are at risk of experiencing abuse and neglect. This article analyzes the state of priority for and quality of governance of Uganda’s formal system for the care of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC).

This study is complementary to the alternative care assessment and explores the perceptions and attitudes of policymakers, judges, and frontline child protection practitioners toward alternative care in Bangladesh. It finds broad consensus that children thrive best in families, yet institutional care remains the default due to the lack of structured alternatives.

This landmark national assessment, led by the Ministry of Social Welfare and the Department of Social Services with UNICEF support, provides the first comprehensive mapping of residential childcare institutions across Bangladesh.

El abuso sexual infantil constituye un grave problema mundial que resulta muy difícil develar, particularmente en contextos institucionales y sin soporte familiar. Desde allí, se busca comprender, desde la perspectiva de personas adultas sobrevivientes y psicólogas tratantes, las experiencias de develación del abuso en entornos residenciales en Chile y las respuestas institucionales tras su develación.

This article examines the rise of independent foster care agencies (IFAs) in Sweden, which have introduced a market-based model into a system once managed solely by child welfare authorities. Drawing on national data and social worker perspectives, it explores the benefits, costs, and controversies of IFAs, including concerns about profit-making in foster care.

China’s decision to end its international adoption program after 30 years affects over 160,000 children, many with disabilities, raising concerns about increased institutionalization and developmental risks. This commentary highlights the need for reforms such as expanding domestic adoption, improving foster and kinship care, enhancing institutional quality, and strengthening cross-sector collaboration to create a more family-centered child welfare system.

This study examines the challenges faced by child protection professionals in Turkey when addressing refugee child marriage, highlighting issues in identification, assessment, and residential care due to cultural acceptance and systemic weaknesses. The findings emphasize the need for culturally informed, system-wide interventions to better protect at-risk refugee children.

This article presents the Care Leaver Statistics (CLS) study, the first nationwide panel study in Germany focused on young people leaving out-of-home care, like foster or residential care. It follows about 1,500 youth aged 16–19 over several years to understand their life transitions, including education, employment, housing, health, social networks, and societal participation. The study also emphasizes ethical research practices, diversity sensitivity, and participatory methods that can empower care-experienced youth.